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.]
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.
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.
Hard to Be Inspired
It is hard to be inspired,
blinded by the light,
your brain in visions fired,
wandering in the night,
a traveler in unknown lands,
homeward never your way,
in a higher power's hands,
driven each hour of day.
It is hard to have great gift,
talent that blazes high,
gazing across a rift
at everyone until you die,
gadfly-infested in brain,
driven by unseen prod,
again and again re-slain
by command of a merciless god.
And at the end of endless pains,
what you have you then to show?
The whole world takes your gains
and your candle burns too low.
The novelist claims to be a realist; and he has as much right to defend realism as other novelists had to defend romanticism. But he is out by a thousand miles if he supposes that there has been a general progress from romanticism to realism; or, indeed, from anything to anything else. The great history of the great English novelists would alone be enough to show that the story was never a pure story of progress; but of rebellions and reactions; revolutions and counter-revolutions. When England began to escape from a Puritanism which forbade all romances, the great Richardson rejoiced in being able to pour out floods of tears and tenderness about the most delicate forms of love. When he had done it, the great Fielding rejoiced even more to pour out floods of derision, believing that his coarse candour and common sense was a part of enlightenment and liberty; though often concerned with less delicate forms of love.
A generation later, the great Jane Austen confessed herself disgusted by the coarseness even of Addison, and created a restrained comedy of which half the humour is its deliberate decorum. Then we went on to Dickens and Thackeray, the latter especially dismissing as barbarism what Swift and Smollett had regarded as realism, and even as liberalism. Nothing is now important about these great English novelists except that they were all great. Nobody discusses whether they were all novel; yet each in turn believed himself to be novel. Any one who goes by dates may find himself defending brutality against Richardson or prudery against Fielding. The worst argument in the world is a date. For it is actually taking as fixed the one thing that we really know is fugitive and staking all upon to-day at the moment when it is turning into yesterday. The clock-worshipper has a heavy creed of predestination; and it is only as the tavern closes that its priest cries aloud upon his god; saying, like all the sad modern sages: “Time, gentlemen, time!”
G. K. Chesterton, "About Change" from As I Was Saying.
To the second one proceeds thus. It seems that habitude is not a determinate species of quality, because, as was said, habitude, insofar as it is quality, is called the disposition according to which the disposed is disposed well or badly. But this happens according to any quality, for both according to figure something can happen to be well or badly disposed, and similarly according to hot and cold, and according to all suchlike things. Therefore habitude is not a determinate species of quality.
Further, the Philosopher in the Categories says that heat and coldness are dispositions or habitudes, just like illness and health. But hot and cold are in the third species of quality. Thus habitudes or disposition are not distinguished from other species of quality.
Further, being able to be changed with difficulty [difficile mobile] is not a differentia pertaining to the genus of quality, but pertains more to change or undergoings [passionem]. But no genus is determined to a species through the differentia of another genus; rather, differentiae must come to a genus through itself, as the Philosopher says in Metaph. VII. Therefore, because habitude is said to be the quality of the difficult to be changed [difficile mobile], it seems that it is not a determinate species of quality.
But contrariwise is what the Philosopher says in the Categories, that one species of quality is habitude and disposition.
I respond that it must be said that the Philosopher in the Categories puts disposition and habitude among the four species of quality. Simplicius in his Commentary on the Categories assigns the differentiae of these species in this way, saying that some qualities are natural, which according to nature are within and always, but some are adventitious, which are effected from outside and can be lost. And those which are adventitious are habitudes and dispositions, differing according to being able to be lost with ease or with difficulty [facile et difficile amissibile]. But some of the natural qualities are according to that which something is potentially, and such are the second species of quality. Some, on the other hand, are according to what something is actually, and this either deeply or superficially. If deeply, such is the third species of quality; superficially, on the other hand, is the fourth species of quality, such as figure and the form that is the figure of what is animate. But this distinction of the species of quality seems inappropriate, for there are many figures and passible qualities that are not natural but adventitious, and many dispositions that are not adventitious but natural, such as health and beauty and suchlike. And, further, this is not appropriate to the order of the species, for always what is natural is prior.
And therefore in another way this distinction of habitude and disposition from other qualities must be taken. For quality properly involves mode of substance. Now mode is, as Augustine says, Super Gen. ad Litt., is what measure prefixes; wherefore it involves a certain determination according to some measure. And therefore just as that which according to material potential is determined according to substantial being is called substantial quality, so also that which according to subject's potential is determined according to accidental being is called accidental quality, which is also a certain differentia, as is clear from the Aristotle in Metaph. V. Now mode, or the determination of the subject according to accidental being, is able to be taken either in an order to the very nature of the subject or according to action and passion, which follow from the principles of nature, which are matter and form, or according to quantity. But if mode or determination of subject is taken according to quantity, such is the fourth species of quality. And because quantity, according to its notion, is without change and without the notion of good and bad, it therefore does not pertain to the fourth species of quality that something is done well or badly, passing swiftly or slowly. But the mode or determination of subject according to action and passion is found in the second and third species of quality. And therefore in both it is considered that something is done with ease or with difficulty, or that it is passing swiftly or enduring; but there is not considered something pertaining to the notion of good or bad, because change and undergoings do not have the notion of an end, but good and bad are said with respect to the end.
But the mode and determination of a subject in the order to the nature of a thing pertains to the first species of quality, which is habitude and disposition, as the Philosopher says in Phys. VII, saying of the habitudes of soul and body that they are a sort of disposition of the complete to the best; but I call the complete what is disposed according to nature. And because the same form and nature is end and cause for which something is done, as is said in Phys. II, in the first species good and bad are considered, and also what is able to be changed with easy or with difficulty [facile et difficile mobile], according as some nature is an end of generation and change. Wherefore in Metaph. V the Philosopher defines habitude as the disposition according to which something is disposed well or badly, and in Ethic. II he says that habitudes are that according to which we have ourselves well or badly toward passions; for when a mode is appropriate to the nature of a thing, then it has the the notion of good, and when it is not appropriate, then it has the notion of bad. And because nature is that which is first considered in a thing, habitude is put in the first species of quality.
To the first, therefore, it must be said that disposition involves a certain order, as was said; wherefore something is not said said to be disposed by quality, except in an order to something. And if well or badly is added, which pertains to the notion of a habitude, we must pay attention to the order to the nature which is the end. Thus according to figure, or according to hot and cold, someone is not said to be disposed well or badly, except according to an order to the nature of the thing, according to what is appropriate or inappropriate. Wherefore both figures themselves and passible qualities, according as they are considered appropriate or inappropriate to the nature of the thing, belong to habitudes or dispositions, for figure, insofar as it is appropriate to the nature of the thing, and color pertain to beauty, but hot and cold, according as they are appropriate to the nature of the thing, pertain to health. And in this way heat and coldness are put by the Philosopher in the first species of quality.
Wherefore the solution to the second is clear, although some solve it otherwise, as Simplicius says in the Commentary on the Categories.
To the third it must be said that this differentia, able to be changed with difficulty [difficile mobile], does not make habitude different from other species of quality, but from disposition. For disposition is taken in two ways: in one way, according as it is a genus for habitude, for in Metaph. V disposition is put into the definition of habitude; in another way, according as it is something divided from habitude. And the disposition that is properly said to be condivisible from habitude can be understood in two ways: in one way, as complete and incomplete in the same species, as it is called disposition, retaining the common name, when it is incompletely in something so as to be easily lost, but habitude when it is completely in something and is not easily lost. And thus disposition is habitude just like boy is man. In another way, they can be distinguished as different species subalternate to one genus, so that dispositions are said to be those qualities of the first species to which it is appropriate according to their notion to be easy to be lost, because they have transformable [transmutabile] causes, such as illness and health, but habitudes are said to be those qualities that according to their nature have what is not easy to transform, because they have unchangeable causes, like kinds of knowledge and virtues. And according to this, disposition is not habitude. And this seems to harmonize more with Aristotle's intention; wherefore, to prove this distinction, he draws upon [inducit] the common convention for speaking, according to which qualities that according to their notion are able to be changed with ease [facile mobiles] are, if by some accident are rendered able to be changed with difficulty [difficile moblies], are said to be habitudes, and conversely with qualities that by their notion able to changed with difficulty; for if someone has knowledge incompletely, so that he is easily able to lose it, he is said to be disposed to knowledge rather than to have knowledge. For which it is clear that the word 'habitude' involves a certain durability, but not the word 'disposition'. Nor does this stand in the way of 'being able to be changed with ease' or 'with difficulty' [facile et difficile mobile] being specific differentiae on the ground that these pertain to undergoing and change and not the genus of quality. For these differentiae, although they seem to have themselves accidentally toward quality, nonetheless designate the proper and per se differentiae of qualities, just as in the genus of substance accidental differentiae are often taken in place of substantial ones, inasmuch as essential principles are designated by them.
[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.49.2. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation here.]
Aristotle divides the category of quality into four species:
(1) habitude and disposition
(2) natural capabilities and incapabilities
(3) passible qualities
(4) figure
His discussion strongly suggests that this is some immediate division of the category, but notoriously nobody knows quite what underlies the division. St. Thomas's (educated) guess is that the order is actually important, and this is a significant move, much more than it might seem. It's an important implication of this that there is a sense in which habitude and disposition is the kind of quality that has the strongest connection to what is natural to a thing. Virtue, knowledge, health, and beauty are all examples Aristotle uses of the first species of quality, and it's noteworthy that they can all be considered a sort of 'second nature' or a natural outgrowth of our original nature. It's also probably relevant, given the next two species (if, like Aquinas, we take the order to be significant), that habitude and disposition are easily the most active of the qualities; as we go down the list, it seems that we deal with things that depend more and more on the activity of something other than the quality, or for that matter the thing that has it, itself.
It's perhaps a little unexpected to find habitude regarded as more natural than natural capability, but by the latter Aristotle means the sense in which someone might be a 'natural wrestler' or naturally healthy, and it does seem that this is at least more attenuated than actual skill or actual health. Passible qualities are things like sweetness and color; by figure Aristotle seems originally to mean something like the quality of a quantity, e.g., a mathematical object being three-dimensional or circular or square-ish, or a number being cubic or prime. Most commentators have, I think, taken it a little more physically than that; perhaps 'jagged' or 'smooth' would be good examples in English.
* Elliot Polsky, Aquinas the Boethian: Interpreting Quod Est and Esse in Aquinas in Light of His Sources (PDF) -- an interesting argument that Aquinas is less Avicennian on the matter than usually thought; usually William of Auvergne is thought to be the closest predecessor to Aquinas on composition of essence and actual being, but Polsky argues that he's reacting against this line of thought and going back to Boethius.
* John Carlos Baez, The Inverse Cube Force Law, at "Azimuth"
* John Walsh, Kant on the Supposed Incapacity to Transgress the Moral Law Freely (PDF)
* Ben Burgis, What Marx's Comments on Aristotle and John Stuart Mill Reveal About His Critique of Political Economy, at "Philosophy for the People"
* Ruth Boeker & Evie Filea, Catharine Trotter Cockburn's and Anne Hepburn Arbuthnot's contributions to Scottish philosophy (PDF)
* Jody Azzouni, Use and mention with respect to "know", "believe", "evidence", "justification", "hypothesis", and so on: A hot mess (PDF)
* Speech Acts and Fictions I: Fiction as Pretended Illocution, at "Flame & Light", on John Searle's account of fiction.
* Mikel Aickin, The Failed Experiment that Failed to Fail (PDF), on the Michelson-Morley experiment
* Aravindh Rajan and Ian McKay, There has to be a better way to make titanium, at "Orca Notes"
* Vanessa A. Seifert, The many laws in the periodic table (PDF)
* Catharine Saint-Croix, Tabletop Philosophy, at "Blog of the APA"
* Marius Stan, Kant's third law of mechanics: The long shadow of Leibniz (PDF)
* James Chastek, Disputed question on created substance, at "Just Thomism"
* Jason Turner, Ultrafilters as Propositional Theories (PDF)