Dashed Off XVII

 The notion of a practice presupposes those of itnentionality and teleology, which distinguish this practice from that, and apparent practice from real, and attempted practice from nonpractice.

Look *through* the argument and see its mechanism.

The book of Esther teaches us that corrupt law and politics have their own loopholes.

Hans Jonas: Act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life.

Consent is always a multilayered thing; this is why anything based on it gets so complicated.

Every con works by consent.

Family is in itself a natural human interest, a way in which we contextualize ourselves biologically and socially,a nd a scaffolding by which we are able to learn how to see ourselves as human persons within the human community.

Music contributes to our moral development by providing a communication through which we can be opened up to personality-in-general, unspecified person-connection, as carried by its expressiveness and our responsiveness to it, and by its beauty, which requires rising above our own selfish interests to appreciate.

There is a skill in being poor well and a skill in being rich well.

The friction of the writing is the material of the writing; it is what the planning and problem-solving uses, as engineers use friction and resistance.

(1) Suppose it is possible that there is nothing.
(2) What is possible in this way would have to be actually possible.
(3) What is actually anything requires that something actually is, with respect to which it is actually what it is.
(4) Therefore if it is possible that there is nothing, something actually is.
(5) Something actually being implies that it is not true that there is nothing.
(6) Therefore, if it is possible that there is nothing, it is not true that there is nothing.

"When someone choose X but is aware of no reason to choose ~X, it is nto necessary that the action be free." James Chastek

Law by its nature is tolerant of falsehoods that do not directly oppose its means in matters of justice.

polite fictions // legal fictions

Law exists only in an ocean of reason.

We can only fully give ourselves to those who give us to ourselves.

'One' is predicable of every multitude.

Every intellectual system implies alternative intellectual systems that are related to it in various ways.

Half of every proession is consistency.

Intellectuals unchallenged become intellectually flabby.

participation, appreciation, participative appreciation, appreciative participation

When viewing a painting, one may also imagine observing the scene, but that is not what one is doing in viewing the painting, which is seeing the painting as what it is, such-and-such scene in paint.

We do not discover scenes in the real world until we recognize the possibility of conveying them in works of art.

Stable and effective political representation requries a semi-independence only property with property rights can give. The desperate and the buyable cannot be easily represented.

academic logistics as planned economy logistics

Hegelian dialectic as a progressive system of transcendental arguments

Eros seeks life undying.

"It is not money but the volume of goods and services which determines whether a country is poverty-stricken or prosperous." Thomas Sowell

Contracts and covenants are disciplines of memory, specifying things to be kept in remembrance, and whose enorcement depends on what is kept in remembrance for the purposes of the agreement.

No amount of infallible interpretation by Pope or Council could ever exhaust the riches of Scripture as divine revelation.

The exemplar cause is that which an effect imitates from being directed by an agent to an end.

The more educated a people, the more they are governed by custom and habit.

Parental authority changes its nature when one attains adulthood, or when the parent dies, but it does not vanish.

"The vestments of the ministers denote the qualifications required of them for handling divine things." Aquinas

We can capture something of the eternal in art because it echoes ourselves and tends personward.

make-believe as mimesis (internal/imaginative mimesis)

'it is fictional that he is seeing a red-roofed mill' vs 'it is really the case that he is seeing a fictional red-roofed mill'

Sometimes make-believe is a 'game', and sometimes it is not.

In poetry, you co-construct the fictional object out of signs, projecting from them 'where' the object would be in the space of possibilities. In painting, this co-construction is much more subtle because the painter provides much more in the way of detail. In poetry, it is fictional that one sees the fictional object; in painting, one sees the fictional object.

It is the purpose of poetry to be excellent use of language. Any other purported purpose is just one of the things poetry can do.

Every painting is indexical (of painter's intention/method), iconic (of what it depicts, even if only colors and shapes), and symbolic (of what is conveyed in and by it).

Conventions have different relations to the natural, and may even admit of grades of closeness to the natural. Two descriptions may be equally conventional but one more natural than the other.

When we see a picture of a dog, we are doing one of the things that we call 'seeing a dog'.

To identify an origin is to identify something such that the effect falls within the scope of its end.

Both the natural and the artificial imitate the divine.

Since, as Walton says, we are not free to make-believe with a prop in any way we like, props have affordances for make-believe, a semiotic potential relative to our capacity for make-believe.

We treat clothing as a quasi-part of ourselves; and likewise we may treat the case of something as a quasi-part of it.

'encased' as falling under the category of habitus
-- it is when a solid physical substance wholly vests another physical substance

place that can encase as an external formal cause (e.g., with minerals)

It takes a universe to make a man.

Personification is often a sign of a lively mind; persons who are thoughtful about the world personalize and personify it.

'Fictional' is just a version of 'made to be true'.

We want not merely pleasure but deserved pleasure, and we take pleasure in deserved pleasure.

"Every being is either the same or other." Aristotle (Met I (10.3, 1054b)
"To-something is the least of all categories as regards physis and ousia, and is posterior to what-kind and how-great." Met N 14.1, 1088
"Not-being has as many senses as the categories." Met N 14.2, 1089

echein is the root of both hexis and schema (the latter through its aorist infinitive, schein)

"Enchantment is the art of awakening spiritual presences in material things." John Michael Greer

The wrongness of flattery shows that we need standing in order to praise.

We extensively use the categories of situs and habitus as sources of metaphors for abstract and intellectual and psychological things.

In general, people use wealth as a means for getting out of general responsibilities to others; not usually in an absolute sense but by using moenty to substitute responsibilities, real or made-up, that they find more convenient.

transfictional identity

"The existence of place is held to be obvious from the fact of mutual replacement." Aristotle Phys IV
"...place would not have been thought of, had there not been a specific kind of motion, namely, that with respect to place."

Llull in Liber Chaos quite clearly does not take habitus to be vestment but habitus as a quality.

Llullian astrology
A -- Air Gemini Libra Aquarius Jupiter, wet & hot
B -- Fire Aries Leo Sagittarius Mars Sol, hot and dry
C -- Earth Taurus Virgo Capricorn Saturn, dry & cold
D -- Water Cancer Scorpio Pisces Venus Luna, cold & wet
--Suppose Sun & Venus in Cancer: DBD; B est devictus, D regnat
-- Suppose Saturn & Jupiter in Aries. Then BCA ; then properties = B = hot and dry, where hot is proper and dry is appropriated.

"Since conjecture is based on changeable signs, it results in a weaker habit of certainty than scientia and opinio." Albert

the longstanding and widespread cultural associations between envy (phthonos) and magical curses

The state is the consequence of the people, not their principle.

the Eucharist and the longing for paradise

taste as confused and obscure knowledge

2 Cor 5:21 -- justice is not merely imputed to us, we become God's justice in Christ.

In television, one should always treat location as a character; it shares its mood, and arbitrarily aids and impedes; it implies a backstory and may tend to a tragic or comic end. It is the ultimate supporting cast.

To respect and appreciate beauty as it ought to be respected and appreciated, we must treat it as having in smoe way a real and cosmic importance.

What we want piecemeal is not necessarily what we want overall; and what we opine piecemeal is not necessarily our overall opinion.

royal prerogative as default priority of Crown -- as tribal chieftaincy, as legal personality, in principal corporation sole

A singer of true talent achieves excellence by incorporating and building on and around what a singer of much less talent would deem an imperfection.

While music often is representational, its great strength is not as such, but as presentational.

Music wraps us in a mood that shapes the possibilities of thought.

Abstract art aspires (at least often) to the condition of music.

Free verse aspires to the condition of untamed thought. (This is why it often seems childish when poorly done.)

When we read philosophically, we read the text not merely in what is on the page, but in the space of possibilities of reasoning through which the text on the page sketches a route.

Music works by induction of internal movement and eduction of symbolic association; it impresses upon us and it evokes what is beyond itself.

Generally, one can substitute 'artificial' for Walton's fictional. (Sometimes 'imaginatively artificial'.)

Asking whether there are fictional characters is like asking whether there are pirouettes and changements; they obviously and identifiably exist as parts of performances and practices for performances and imaginations of performances.

A novel scores and choreographs a performance.

Beauty is needed for speed of learning.

Even innocence bubbles up against constant imposition of rules.

The actor clothes himself in the character.

It is no more 'voodoo metaphysics' to say that fictional characters exist than it is 'voodoo physics' to say that a body has a center of gravity.

In creating us, God creates the standing actual possibility of all of our works.

Storytelling is often explicitly deontic.

Something can only be identified as evil in the context of a greater good against which it shows up as evil.

usefulness to others as a function of strength, intelligence, and sociableness

Even if you assume that PSR itself is false, all our experimental reasoning requires that something in its vicinity is true.

In faith, our belief is an expression of God's trust in us.

Serious philosophical argument is generally quite digressive.

As against water, so against trouble: every dam is temporary.

In partisan politics, everyone has an incentive not to be persuaded by you.

We can think of possibilities as having a tendency or striving to actualize because possibilities depend on actualities, which can have a tendency to act.

In a world in which Holy Scirtpure eixsts, all reading contains spiritual possibilities.

It takes a lot of leisure to learn things well.

medicamentum quotidianae poenitentiae

imputation, adoption, and inheritance

Tradition is a weaving of old and new.

deduction modeled as space (paths/routes)
modeled as time (steps)
modeled as causation

c as the coordination factor for spatial and temporal measurements
locomotion as rotation in time and space according to this factor

Human singing works not by being at a pitch or frequency but by moving through it. It is swift sketching rather than close copying.

quasi-vowel-harmony in singing

in timelit lands we walk our way

the ascetic discipline of understatement

One thing may borrow the being of another, and some things (accident) have being wholly in the borrowing; they are born on loan and in debt, so to speak.

We usually need not empathy but many different empathies.

There seems to be something like a general conservation of prudery; people adapt to relaxation of sexual norms in one area by tightening them in another area.

Bound by Suspense, in More than Iron Chains

Sonnet XXXV
by Alexander Thomson 

 Suspiciens altam lunam, sic voce precatur. -- Virgil 

Fair, silver Queen! whose all pervading eye
Beholds at once whate'er the world contains!
Wilt thou in pity listen from on high,
To him whose lonely heart to thee complains?
Thou seest his soul in anxious torture lie,
Bound by suspense, in more than iron chains;
Thou know'st the cause that prompts his frequent sigh,
And fills with terror's frost his shiv'ring veins.
Oh, tell him then, and end this cruel fear,
Why the dear Youth to whom his heart is join'd,
With Friendship's voice delays to soothe his ear;
Oh tell him this and ease his frantic mind:
From trembling thoughts relieve his cheerless day,
And save his restless night from dreams of wild dismay. 

 Edinburgh Feb 1789

Two Poem Drafts

The second is a poetic exercise, based on Catullus 8, in which you try to use English words to suggest the sound, rather than the meaning, of the original Latin. I cheated a bit by reading v as English v rather than as the classical Latin w-sound, which would give a weally, weally weird sound, and using a few other anglicizations. Of course, it's hard to make anything that does that well and makes any sense in English, but I confess myself rather pleased with "you fill, sir, your ferry with candies, to be solaced" (the original is fulsere vere candidi tibi soles, 'truly, brilliant suns blazed for you'). 

 Two Epics

Two great prose epics did England make:
one was the Tale with Hobbits,
of humble things that rise to wake,
all the schemes of pride to break,
of friends who never will forsake;---

two great prose epics did England make:
one was the Tale with Rabbits,
the quiet hearts who hold up the light
amidst the crashing of darkness and night,
the peaceful folk who rise to the fight;---

and in these epics, clear and bright,
true sustenance the soul may take,
and form heroic habits.

Not Quite Catullus 8

Mister Cattle, in designing ineptly your rage
at what the days, perishing prettily, declare,
you fill, sir, your condo with candies, to be solaced;
conventuals treat of this, corporeally, with caveat.
Who matters? Known but by quantity, name beaten out newly,
a ballet like to molten tomb, choked with seafaring boats,
or, like to volleyballs, now pulled nigh apart,
you fill, sir, your ferry with candies, to be solaced.
Now I am ill and unveiled, too quiet, important -- no lie --
not quite frugal, unstaring; now, mister, vividly
obstinate man, perfect your dark art,
that no rogue have any invitation -- 
yet too you dole out like a rogue bearing nullities.
Scholastically weighed, too! To be man and vital,
quick as night-bats flit in day's light failing,
but unknown by the mob in its sea-saw declaiming,
unbiased and replaced and, labelled, in morgue placed --
that's you, Cattle, destined to suffer.

Subjunctive Modus Ponens

 We have subjunctive conditionals of the form, If p were true, q would be true. We can abbreviate these as (p > q). Indicative conditionals admit of modus ponens, (If p is true, q is true; p is true; therefore q is true). So it seems natural that there would be something analogous for subjunctive conditionals. However, there are complications.

The antecedent of If p were true, q would be true is ambiguous. It could mean something like:

If p were true [rather than what is actually true], q would be true.

Call this the properly counterfactual interpretation. But it could also mean:

If p were true [as it may be], q would be true.

Call this the fortassic interpretation (from Latin fortasse). These are not at all the same thing, but subjunctive conditionals can be used in both ways. This matters a lot. The Supplement on Debates over Counteractual Principles at the SEP has the following example:

If George were caught, he would face years of prison.
Actually, George did get caught.
In that case, he will face years of prison.

This is clearly invalid on the properly counterfactual interpretation. It is at least defensible on the fortassic interpretation. Another example, from the same source:

If the soldier had shot the prisoner, then (even) if the captain hadn’t given the order to shoot, the prisoner (still) would have died.
Actually, the soldier did shoot the prisoner.
So, if the captain hadn’t given the order to shoot, the prisoner would have died.

Again, this is clearly invalid on the properly counterfactual interpretation. But if the main conditional is fortassic, then it is again defensible.

The essential thing is that when we construct a subjunctive conditional, we can do so in such a way as to rule out the possibility of the actual state of affairs from falling under the antecedent (properly counterfactual) or in such a way as to allow that it could (fortassic).

In both of the above examples, we need fortassic interpretations in order to allow the indicative second premise to be combinable with the antecedent. On the counterfactual interpretation, it becomes irrelevant and we have committed an equivocation, namely, treating the indicative p is true as if it were the same as were p to be true. 

Thus, if we have a genuine counterfactual conditional, we can only get modus ponens if our ponens premise is shifted toward the same set of counterfactual situations as the antecedent of the counterfactual conditional:

If p were true [given some change to the actual], q would be true.
p were true [given the same change to the actual].
Therefore, q would be true [given the same change to the actual].

Colloquial English doesn't let us do anything directly like p were true on its own; the usual way we would say something like this is, 'p would be true'. Thus:

If George were caught, he would face years of prison.
George would be caught.
So he would face years of prison.

The shift in how it's stated is awkward, but I suppose it could be argued that it serves a function. In 'George were caught', we are, from the way things actually are, positing a counterfactual situation in which things would be different; with 'George would be caught', we are shifting to the perspective of that counterfactual situation. We then draw a conclusion from within that perspective.

The fortassic interpretation allows us to do the same thing; it just also allows us to treat the perspective of no-difference-from-the-actual as one of the options.

The abbreviation (p > q) unfortunately obscures this. If we say,

p > q
p
Therefore q,

there is nothing to indicate that the ponens premise (p) is to be taken subjunctively and not indicatively. Thus we should probably require something like an index in the antecedent of a subjunctive conditional, to let us indicate when we are in the same region of possibilities:

p₁ > q
p₁
Therefore q.

But this is not always adequate, either. When we have the fortassic conditional and an indicative ponens, the indicative does not cover the same region of possibilities; it's only a part of it. We could do something like p_∈1, but this does not distinguish the indicative situation from the other situations that fall within that region of possibilities. Perhaps p_@∈1? But we need something along such lines if we are to handle counterfactuals properly in a formal notation.

Links of Note

 * A. T. Fyfe, The Need for God and the Problem of Evil within William James' Moral Philosophy (PDF)

* Brandon Warmke, Commencement Speech Morality

* Oliver Traldi, Jane Austen and the Defence of Virtue, at "The Common Reader"

* There Exists an X, The strange history of abortion before Christianity

* John Psmith, REVIEW: 50 Years of Text Games, by Aaron Reed, at "Mr. and Mrs. Psmith's Bookshelf"

* Christopher Kennedy and Malte Willer, Assertion, expression, experience (PDF)

* B. Jack Copeland and William Lyons, Ryle's War

* Senia Sheydvasser, Where are Groups? What are Groups? Why are Groups?, at "The Deranged Mathematician"

* Hunter Coates, A Fresh Translation of Romans 9-11

* James Hartley looks at Watership Down at "The Madrid Review"

* Fr. Justin Hewlett, Choose Your Own Programming Adventure, at "Geek Orthodox"

* Lucas Thorpe, Kant on moral character, immortality, and holiness as the limit of virtue (PDF)

Greatness and Brevity

  My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord: of that Lord, through whom all things were made, and who was made among all things: who is the revealer of the Father, the creator of the mother: the Son of God from the Father without a mother, the son of man from a mother without a father: great in the day of the angels, small in the day of men: the Word God before all times, the Word flesh at the appointed time: the creator of the sun, made under the sun: ordaining all ages from the bosom of the Father, consecrating this day from the womb of the mother: remaining there, coming forth here: maker of heaven and earth, born under heaven on earth: ineffably wise, wisely an infant: filling the world, lying in a manger: ruling the stars, sucking at breasts: so great in the form of God, brief in the form of a servant; so that neither was that greatness diminished by this brevity, nor was this brevity oppressed by that greatness. For nor did he abandon divine works when he took on human limbs: nor did he cease to reach from end to end mightily, and to dispose all things sweetly; when clothed in the infirmity of the flesh, he was received in the virginal womb, not enclosed; so that neither was the food of wisdom withdrawn from the angels, and we might taste how sweet the Lord is.

[St. Augustine, Sermon 187.1]

Apostle of Andalusia

 Today is the feast of St. Juan of Avila, Doctor of the Church.

Take courage, and set out with diligence and fervour: nothing is worse than for a beginner to commence badly by indulging his body and trying to please the world. Shut your ears against all human praise or blame, for in a little while both the critic and the man he judges will be dust and ashes. We shall one day stand before God's tribunal, where the mouth of wickedness shall be stopped and virtue will be exalted. Meanwhile, embrace the cross, and follow Him Who was dishonoured and Who lost His life upon it for your sake. Hide yourself in our Lord's wounds, so that when He comes, He may find you dwelling in Himself. Then He will beautify you with His graces, and give Himself to you as your reward for having left all things, even yourself, for His sake. How little, indeed, does the man who forsakes all things give up! He but leaves now, what, whether he will or no, he can keep but for a very brief time. Even while he possesses it, it brings him misery, for all that is not God only burdens and saddens the soul, which its Creator alone can satisfy. Open your heart to Him, and rejoice in Him, and you will find Him more tender and loving than can be imagined.

[St. John of Avila, from Letters of Blessed John of Avila, p. 101.]