This completes the notebook finished in November of 2024.
The death that haunts us due to original sin is not merely corporeal, but also moral, jural, and sacral. We are doomed not merely to death, but to deathly death; in dying we truly die.
From the time we are in the womb, others act on our behalf.
Poverty, chastity, etc., are preambles and preparations for charity, each being a discipline that exercises and develops capacities relevant to the ardor of charity, and each being an anticipatory sign of some aspect of charity.
Punishment needs to rehabilitate not only the offender but also the social order.
Most of the concerns about 'AI ethics' arise from thinking of AI as a consequentialist engine.
To say 'X is Y for practical purposes' is to say X and Y are at least approximatey equivalent in matters relevant to the specific practical purposes in question.
"Where reason is lively, and mixes itself with some propensity, it ought to be assented to. Where it does not, it never can have any title to operate upon us." Hume
-- Both ought and title here are peculiar. It is odd to think of reason as requiring title "to operate upon us", when it is us, and it is unclear what 'ought' could actually be established to which this title is relevant.
You have not begun to understand the problem of evil until you have looked in the mirror.
"It is a great misfortune to have learned the catechism *against* someone." De Lubac
"Grace gives us, not ony the freedom necessary for true friendship with God, but also the other condition of friendship, equality." Scheeben
"The natural consequence of the Incarnation is to confer on men the right and power to become children of God."
contrastive juxtaposition as a method of sketch writing
Hope is a sort of alliance with greater powers.
Political borders are always symbolically structured.
Utilitarianism is an ethics of symptoms.
"History is the signature of the soul's intellectuality, for the human soul is an intelligence living by motion at the level of intelligibility found in matter." Pegis
We obviously do not value people only by valuing their interests.
GDH Cole and Harold Laski on pluralism of societies
meanings of "the real world"
(1) all that of which true things can be said
(2) that which is not merely dreamed
(3) that which is not merely fictional
(4) that with respect to which responsibility is possible
-- all of these are distinct, but they are often confused
All stories are capable of enchanting history.
the draw of a tale
Dooyeweerd's criticism of cosmological arguments on the basis of a purported antinomy of causality and normative responsibility, due to the seamless chain, seems to create insuperable problems for Reformed theology of providence, which seems to require not only that God be the Origin of causality but also the ultimate cause actually causing.
existence, causality, purpose
Christianity as co-confession
The first and fundamental task of any apologist is to tell the story.
We propositionalize in order to trust and to communicate trust.
The water flows, the earth to grace,
in driving streams that interlace
like friend with friend in joining hand
to cool and freshen thirsty land.
apologetics
-- the path of theoretical reason
-- -- -- (1) demonstrative (proof)
-- -- -- (2) theoretical-dialectical (theoretical probability)
-- the path of practical reason
-- -- -- (1) practical-dialectical or deliberative (practical presumption)
-- -- -- (2) rhetorical (persuasiveness)
-- the path of reasoned imagination
-- -- -- (1) rhetorical-poetical (plausibility)
-- -- -- (2) poetical (suggestiveness)
Contingent historical truths presuppose eternal truths of reason.
(1) We experience things that are derivatively intelligible by nature.
(2) What is derivatively intelligible by nature requires what is nonderivatively intelligible by nature.
Therefore, etc.
entropy as measure of quantity of microstates associated with a classification
combinatorially possible but causally inaccessible possible worlds
eigenstates : actually possible states :: eigenvalues : probabilities
To think intuitively is to think substantively, to think as a stable being able to be completed by other stable being.
The bodies we actually experience are not merely extensive but also intensive and protensive -- that is, they are clearly not only quantiative but also qualitative and active.
The modern world is a continual chasing after the incidental rather than the substantial.
sacramentum ligni vitae fructus
the feeling of finding as a modality of our sense of novelty
testimony : longbow :: argument : crossbow (Bacon, cf. Johnson)
There is always time for patience.
apparent timelines (as experienced) + effective timelines (causally unified) --> reconciled unified timeline
-- this is a common pattern in historical work, in detective work, in some experimental work, etc.
world-building as machinery for extrinsic consistency
There are very few metrics by which modern Europe or the US are more pluralistic than the Roman Empire.
As being itself, God is exemplar principle both of res and of aliquid, of quiddity and of alterity, of integrity and of diversity.
alethic, epistemic, and deontic models/interpretations of validity
abortion as alienation of humanity, particularly with respect to humanity as situating us in an enduring community of human persons
value for a human-friendly ecosystem and the ethical implications of this value
integral human ecology & the virtue of temperance
Scientific classifications are based on functions in experiment, in model, and in theory.
Many schemes of distributive justice falsely assume that resources and money are always jural goods.
solution-finding by resemblance, by contiguity, and by causation
"People are not bound to do anything beyond their power except in a way made possible for them." Aquinas (Quodl. 2.4.1)
Children are in the moral, juridical, and sacral womb; they remain so longer than they remain in the physical womb.
Children have reason but must learn to use it.
figural goods and human sacrality
Contracts are simultaneously moral, jural, and sacral.
basic facts of human experience that serve as leverage points for apologetics
(1) living in a world
(2) being part of a community of minds
(3) being under authority (e.g., in conscience)
(4) having a sense of one's own mind
(5) the existence of the faith
Humanity is partly instrumental to itself; human nature is self-instrumentating and self-instrumentated, although necessarily it is both only to an extent.
"Fight the enemy with the weapons he lacks." Suvarov
"Train hard, fight easy."
A vow of celibacy begins as a form of honor, develops into a kind of moral integrity, and is perfected into an expression of sanctity. This is common to all religious vows, although it can sometimes be seen with particular clarity in matters of celibacy.
The concept of a field in physics cannot be formulated without assuming that we can determine some facts about the future from some facts about the past, with mathematical rigor.
Reason is the most useful tool of a cursorial hunter hunting large or dangerous prey.
Bishops and priests share the highest power with respect to the Eucharist (consecrating it), but bishops have it in a higher mode.
In civil society there are necessary roles that require *formal practices of fortitude* to systematize -- e.g., hunting, soldiering, enforcing, firefighting, civil defense, etc. The same is true of ecclesial society; hence the sacrament of confirmation.
As the baptismal character in heaven will continue to be a badge of citizenship, so the confirmational character will continue in heaven to be a badge of formal service, as will the ordinational character.
present consciousness as overlap of memory and anticipation
-- memory and anticipation are in fact not sharpy distinct, although we tend to treat them as so; what is happening now is both remembered and anticipated, although in different respects
Aesthetic responses to the problem of evil are entirely adequate where evil is conceived as the difficult or unpleasant.
In the problem of evil, aesthetic evil requires an aesthetic solution, moral evil a moral solution, juridical evil a juridical solution, and sacrilegious evil a sacred solution. All of these are justifiable in general terms, but they are unified only in Christ.
We tend to think of potentiality in terms of time's positive numbers (after), but nothing prevents considering it in terms of time's negative numbers (before). Things have a back-potential to what they were before.
Conservation laws designate the material subject(s) of things and systems of things in relation to moving causes.
Scripture as such is a symbol of providence, of Tradition, and of Christ.
The person in the present is symbol of the same person in the past and in the future; but interestingly enough, in both ways we tend to see the symbolism as a symbolism of possibilities -- the present adult is symbol of the promise and potential (perhaps tragic potential) of the past child, and of the possibilities of the future self. (This is, I think, what makes this symbolism more than 'A standing in for A'.)
It takes rational work for the human mind to see all the truth even in obviously true things.
Literature and experiment both make extensive use of our ability to hypothesize.
forms of play in common RPG's
(1) rollplay
(2) roleplay
(3) GM narration
(4) GM-player negotiation
player experiences: competition, argument, negotiation, discovery, narration
joint attention --> referential overlap
conditions of participating in a class, of being recognizable as being in a class, of classification change
forms of game success: diversion, victory, story formation
Sun - pride; Moon - envy; Mercury - avaraice; Venus -lust; Mars - wrath; Jupiter - gluttony; Saturn - sloth
"A device is easy to use when there is visibility to the set of possible actions, where the controls and displays exploit natural mappings." Donald A. Norman
"The designer must assume that all possible errors will occur and design so as to minimize the chance of the error in the first place, or its effects once it gets made. Errors should be easy to detect, they should have minimal consequences, and, if possible, their effects should be reversible."
People have difficulty with mathematics because mathematicians do not design it for general users but for themselves.
subgames in RPG's: FIND, FIGHT, FLEE, HIDE, TRADE
Kant holds that reference to the beautiful as the symbol of the morally good is something "every man postulates in others as a duty."
Cave paintings are often of big, striking animals; herd animals and majestic predators tend to be heavily represented in comparison with all others. This suggests to me that they were either memory-recordings (that great time we saw the huge herd of horses) or storytelling instruments. The relation between paintings and cave wall structure, suggesting a pareidolic origin, perhaps indicates the latter in at least many cases, and at least in teh sense that connection to memory is only generic.
Painted hands in caves are of all kinds, and one can occasionally find children's hands on ceilings -- which is suggestive of a parenting practice we can recognize today.
force : charge :: distance : voltage
Considering trade-offs requires first establishing a point and measure for comparison.
the social intellectual power of conversation/dialogue
"One should not give assent lightly to doubtful things." Aquinas (QQ 3.4.2)
officious metonymy as a way of organizing abstractions
the poetic apparatus of a culture (e.g., Renaissance use of Greco-Roman mythology, modern use of superhero tropes, the material of national epics, the Matter of Britain, etc.)
Much modern paganism is organized on a principle of hospitality, a making-hospitable for powers and effects.
The ancient Israelites shared many customs, including religious customs, with the surrounding nations. The Torah did not forbid them all, but only the groves, the idols, the necromancies, and the sexual disruptions.
social ontology as an expression of human viceregency
Responsibility for life begins with physical union, prior even to conception.
"Only a man can develop the properties of men; ony a person can develop the properties of persons." Rhonheimer
Evidence is generally not precisely focused enough to pick out all the options in a way to give precise probabilities; for any piece of evidence, there are usually distinctions among options that are not legible in terms of it.
It is a fundamental part of any serious relationship to and wtih a person to recognize that they are more than your experiences of them.
It is friendship that teaches us how to respect human dignity.
Act in such a way as to treat every person as someone with whom one could in principle have a friendly relation.
a moral person in a moral society in a moral world
A word with an incoherent definition may be used to refer to something real.
problem compressibility: a problem that is very complex may be solved by 'compression' into simpler problem(s)
methods of problem compression:
(1) analysis into subproblems
(2) analogy to solved problems
(3) idealization (removing the secondary and minor)
(4) guess - check - rigorously examine success or failure
(5) postulation of simplifying assumptions
The human mind loves exploring systems of things; we are drawn to the combination of system and discovery.
Perception involves an already-cognition and a to-be-cognition, a receiving into memory and an anticipatory readying for response.
The pope both succeeds Peter and assists under him, being Peter's vicar in the militant service.
One of the means by which society shapes the mind is by selectively raising and lowering the cost of enunciation.
The right of vicinage primarily works by restricting the abuse of jury selection by the state and its prosecution.
Memory is always the first and most basic bureaucratic record, and much of bureaucracy is the externalization of aspects of it, for regularizing procedures and review.
