Dashed Off VI

 Whether a body can be two places at once depends on its relation to the boundary of the place.

-- Olivi tries to reduce quantity to situs and positio of parts.

Scotus seems to give a somewhat different account of transubstantiation every time he discusses it. Consider this further.

"A philosophy of the Beautiful lies by implication within a speculative system, when it is not explicitly announced." William Knight

satisfying contemplations and the intellectual life

Nobody can be saved outside the Church because it is in the Church that Jesus Christ is both priest and sacrifice. (Cf. IV Lateran)

Aesthetic judgment depends heavily on aesthetic classification.

'a loving, simple, and permanent attentiveness of the mind to divine things'

pride as a false imitation of truth, goodness, and beauty

"Every office, both spiritual and temporal, requires more than moral goodness to perform it well." Aquinas

respect for office // veneration of icons

Torah as a divine social ontology

Christ's Passion in itself is offered for everyone; Christ's Passion in the Mass is offered for specific people (the congregation and those for whom it is explicitly offered).

"Design is really an act of communication, which means having a deep understanding of the person with whom the designer is communicating." Donald Norman
"To understand how to use things, we need conceptual models of how they work."

Even a very average human adult can immediately recognize tool capabilities for tens of thousands of things.

To say that we use tools or are tool-users is nto merely to say that we can occasionally exercise instrumental causality, which all living things sometimes can do; it is to say that we can use as tools entire systems of tools. Similar things can be said of our use of signs.

affordances, constraints, and mappings

design model -> system image -> user's model

One of the major functions of tragedy, important for its effect on moral and civil life, is reconciling us to the existence of the tragic in a way that  is neither cold nor maudlin.

workflow as an abstract practical instrument for organizing use of multiple tools to regular result

that whose existence is absolute
that whose existence is partly relative
that whose existence is wholly relative

Order is the root of splendor; the latter is a manifestation of integral order.

the easy intelligibility that delights

Cognition is accomplished by likening.

It takes a very great mind to see all of the beauty of things. Human experiences of beauty are generally very incomplete and limited.

Kant tends to blur finis qui, finis cui, and finis quo.

Artisans love their own work as part of their own being.

the recta ratio factibilium with respect to making and the recta ratio factibilium proper (with respect to the made)

will : using :: intellect : accounting for

The poet creates resemblances, contiguities, and regularities.

The beautified presupposes the beautiful in itself.

When we talk of the image in poetry, this is a figure of speech; the image is an intelligible object also capable of being an object of sensible experience, with the relevant intelligible and imaginative associations.

When an idea is introduced in physics, it takes decades and sometimes centuries to understand properly.

-- current is symbolzed by I because its original name in Frence was intensité du courant; the symbol comes from Ampère.

We measure the 'information' of event with probability p by -log p entirely because this is the way to convert p into a number that easily adds and still lets you associate the less probable with the more 'informative'.

The wealth of a nation needs to be more than an immense accumulation of commodities.

Common ground must be constructed, not merely assumed.

Holy orders is most properly and fully episcopal, and the priestly and diaconal are imperfect and instrumental participations in the episcopal power of order, which is the unifying center of the sacrament.

Episcopal and presbyteral powers of consecration of teh Body and Blood are the same as to object, but as to act of consecrating, the presbyteral power is instrumental to episcopal power. (The episcopal power is itself in turn instrumental to the apostolic, although in a different way.)

"Just as the perfections of all natural things pre-exist in God as their exemplar, so was Christ the exemplar of all ecclesiastical offices." Aquinas

deputamur ad cultum Dei secundum ritum Christianae religionis

"Totus autem ritus Christianae religionis derivatur a sacerdoto Christi." Aquinas

We praise people not only for the perfection of virtue but also for the beginnings of virtue and for the broadly virtue-like.

1 Tim 3:5 -- the bishop's task is to take care (epimeleomai) of the ecclesia of God
-- 'take care' is elsewhere found in Luke 10 -- the Good Samaritan takes care of the traveler, and then tells the host to take care of him.
1 Tim 3:6-7 -- the bishop is in danger of the devil both internally (through pride) and externally (through poor witness)

The obedience of a citizen derives from governance by citizens.

Bentham explicitly says taht the end of the Panopticon and all punishment is deterrence by terror of example.

Romans 13:7 gives the Greek terms for the two kinds of tax in Roman Law: tributum and vectigalia. Tributum (phoros): property tax, tax of conquered territory, ground rent, poll tax. Vectigalia: imposts on transported goods, tax on slaves, inheritance tax.

The principle of sufficient reason depends on assumptions like 'Everything is simple or composite' and 'Everything is necessary or contingent'.

the rhetorical aspect of philosophy: a great deal of philosophy is devoted to formulating things well (intelligibly, accurately, and nonmisleadingly)

instruments of salvation according to the ordinary counsels of providence

Our conception of the external world is layered; things are not merely external but varying degrees and forms of external.

'Per evangelica dicta deleantur nostra delicta' ('Through the evangelical words may our crimes be blotted out')

Apprehension of divine things does not float free from images and signs.

The value of satsifying any preferences depends on the reasons behind them.

"If the transition is too abrupt there is no feeling of arrival." Christopher Alexander

Memory is the root of mythology.

All avant garde has an affinity to the grotesque, arising from extraordinary freedom of imagination.

The ugly suggests a beauty that might be.

erotetic inference from presuppositions: question -> presuppositions -> inference
erotetic inference from implicatures
erotetic inference from sign or classification: e.g., Is X Y? -> Y is a diagnostic mark of Z -> Is X Z? Is X Y? -> Y is a species of Z -> Is X Z?

kapar (atonement) as sealing
Gn 6:14 seal it within and without
Gn 32:20 sea him with a present
Pr 16:6 By mercy and truth iniquity is sealed off
Ps 79:9 Seal away our sins
Jer 18:23 Do nto seal their sin from your sight
Lv 16:18 And he shall go out to the altar before the Lord and seal it, taking the bullock's blood and the goat's blood and putting it round about the altar horns.

sovereign dignity vs sovereign functionality

No human razor is sharp enough to separate all of a man's good opinions from his bad opinions; they ahve always or almost always grown up together.

Bayes' Theorem has no time component, and neither does Bayesian update; it works equally well forward and backward. This is obscured by the (purely verbal) use of 'prior' and 'posterior' and by the (interpretive) assumption that updating is concerned with chronologically new evidence in a forward-directed inquiry.

Bayes' Theoreme as a probabilistic version of contraposition

What Hume calls association is really classification.

In an ordered series of authorizations, the principal authority authorizes more fully than the derived authorities; but God is first and universal authority.

"When something is well orered in view of the general order of things, there is no reason why its contrary cannot be well ordered for a special reason." Aquinas 

One researches in order to interpret, and interprets to fulfill research.

Daringly stupid is surprisingly stupid.

In argumentative situations, people are mostly convinced by the failure of their ingenuity in finding reasons not to be convinced.

Praise and blame are always a matter of classification.

(1) What has the power to exist always does not exist at one time and not another.
:: When it does not exist, it does not have the power to exist for that time.
(2) What begins to exist, exists at one time and not at another.
(3) Therefore, what is generable does not itself have the power to exist always.
(4) Therefore, what is generable is corruptible.

benevolence : ready reserve :: beneficence : actual implementation

first principles as images of First Truth

the poet as student of potable light, i.e., sensible intelligibility

The sensible in general is the symbol of the intelligible, but the sensed triangle is not merely symbolic of the intelligible triangle; it is not merely vicarious but participant.

sovereignty as a kind of juridical integrity grounding rights with respect to that integrity that give it authority over law

-- if one uses possible world semantics to describe perspectives, one needs to allow a pw to carry false information about another, or distinguish pw's as real and apparent

Everything is intelligible in itself or as explained by another.

genres as concept-tradition complexes

Matter only bears a mereologized relationship to substance if form does.

What we actually work with in experience and observation is 'having measurable effect'; all the fundamental concepts of physics, all its conservation laws, are concerned with adequacy (in change) of the cause for the measurable effect, and are a sort of bookkeeping for this.

Election politics is liable to mudslinging because people vote based on classifications.

By imagination we can sometimes learn from our mistakes before we make them.

Testimony is reason communicated.

The nostalgia trip is one of the blessings of each generation as it ages out.

contract by
(1) done deed
(2) symbolic transfer
(3) promissory means

To Starve Thy Sin, Not Bin

To Keep a True Lent
by Robert Herrick 

 Is this a fast, to keep
The larder lean?
And clean
From fat of veals and sheep? 

 Is it to quit the dish
Of flesh, yet still
To fill
The platter high with fish? 

 Is it to fast an hour,
Or ragg’d to go,
Or show
A downcast look and sour? 

 No; 'tis a fast to dole
Thy sheaf of wheat,
And meat,
Unto the hungry soul. 

 It is to fast from strife,
From old debate
And hate;
To circumcise thy life. 

 To show a heart grief-rent;
To starve thy sin,
Not bin;
And that’s to keep thy Lent.

Habitude XXVI

 To the first one proceeds thus. It seems that every virtue is moral. For moral virtue is named from 'mos', that is, custom. But we are able to become accustomed to the acts of every virtue. Therefore every virtue is moral virtue.

Further, the Philosopher says in Ethic. II that virtue is a choosing habitude consisting in the rational mean. But every virtue seems to be a choosing habitude, because we are able to do the acts of whatever virtue from choosing. Every virtue also consists in some way in the rational mean, as will be obvious below. Therefore every virtue is moral.

Further, Tully says in his Rhetoric that virtue is habitude in the mode of nature in accordance with reason. But since every human virtue is ordered to human good, it must be in accordance with reason, for human good is to be according to reason, as Dionysius says. Therefore every virtue is moral.

But contrariwise is what the Philosopher says in Ethic. I: Speaking of morals, we do not say that one is wise or intelligent, but that one is gentle or sober. So, therefore, wisdom and intellection are not moral. They are, however, virtues, as was said above. Therefore not every virtue is moral.

I reply that it must be said that, toward this being clear, one must consider what 'mos' is, for in this way we will be able to know what moral virtue is. And 'mos' signifies two things. For sometimes it signifies custom, as is said in Acts XV, Unless you are circumcised according to the 'mos' of Moses, you are not able to be saved. Sometimes it means a sort of natural or quasi-natural inclination to enact something, from which some things of brute animals are called 'mores', as is said in 2 Maccab. XI, that rushing on the enemy in the 'mos' of lions, they leveled them. And so 'mos' is taken in Psalm LXVII, where it is said, who makes to dwell those of one 'mos' in a house. And these two significations are in no way distinguished as to word in Latin. But in Greek they are distinguished, for 'ethos', which among us signifies 'mos', sometimes has a long first part, and is written with the Greek letter eta, but sometimes it has a short first part, and is written with epsilon. 

Now moral virtue is named from 'mos' according as 'mos' signifies natural or quasi-natural inclination to enact something. And the other signification, which significes custom, is near to this signification, for custom is in a way turned into nature and makes an inclination like the natural. But it is manifest that inclination to act properly agrees with [convenit] striving virtue [appetitivae virtuti], to which it belongs to move all the powers to act, as is obvious from what was said above. And therefore not every virtue is called moral, but only that which is in the striving impulse [vi appetitiva].

To the first it therefore must be said that the objection proceeds from 'mos' inasmuch as it signifies custom.

To the second it must be said that every act of virtue is able to be enacted from choosing, but only virtue that is in the striving part of the soul is able to act with right choosing, for it was said above that to choose is an act of the striving part. Wherefore choosing habitude, which is a source of choosing, is the only one that completes the striving impulse, although the acts of other habitudes are able to fall under choosing.

To the third it must be said that nature is a source of change, as is said in Physic. II. But to move to act is properly in the striving part. And thus to be likened to nature in rational consenting is proper to virtues that are in the striving impulse.

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 1.58.1, my translation. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation is here.]

Ash Wednesday

 From the Hoosoyo (Prayer of Forgiveness) of the Maronite liturgy for the First Weekday Cycle of Lent (and thus celebrated on Ash Monday and, when liturgies are celebrated on Ash Wednesday in Maronite Churches, for Ash Wednesday as well): 

 O Christ, Lover of all people, you gave the Church the holy season of Lent as a shield of protection and a healing remedy. Your fasting and sacrifices taught us to fast, and to understand the purpose and essence of life, the meaning of the world and its existence, and the greatness of your love and compassion. Shower your mercy on all people that they may repent, and soften their hearts that they may return to you, know you, and love you.

'Physical' and 'Moral' Causality in Sacraments

 There has long been a dispute in Catholic sacramentology over whether the efficacy of the sacraments is 'physical' or 'moral'. The terms don't mean here what they usually mean; 'physical' means here only that the causality is by some quality, capacity, capability, impulse, or force provided to the sacrament (or sacramental effect, depending on the exact version) itself. 'Moral' means that the sacrament causes specifically by being a reason for God to cause an effect. In these senses, grace itself always works by physical causality, while petitionary prayer always works by moral causality, and so the question is whether the sacraments themselves are more like the former or the latter. Everybody recognizes that God acts in the sacraments as a 'physical' cause.

One of the things that has plagued this discussion is rampant equivocation. For instance, the Sacrae Theologiae Summae VI (which is all-in on moral causality) gives the following argument (tr. 1 ch. 3. art. 4 th. 10 sect. 89):

A sacrament is a moral composite, consisting of physical parts somewhat separated in time among themselves. Therefore the physical power of acting cannot be attributed to the composite as such, because it is not a physical entity. Therefore, to what should it be attributed? to the matter? to the form? to which part of the form? (p. 74)

But this equivocates on both 'moral' and 'physical'. Sacraments, which are artifacts, are indeed moral composites -- that means that they are put together by will rather than naturally being composed the way they are -- but this is irrelevant to the question of whether they are moral causes, which is about whether they cause grace instrumentally by being provided, by God, a capability qua instrument through which he acts, or whether they cause grace instrumentally by providing God a reason to cause grace because of them. The claim that a physical power of acting cannot be attributed to a moral composite is simply wrong, when we use the term 'physical' in the correct way; if this were true, a hammer (which is a moral composite) could not be given the force to hit a nail, and a series of dominos (which is also a moral composite, and one with physical parts somewhat separated in time among themselves) could not be set to induce a falling motion in each other that achieves some result at the end.

Since none of the sacraments seem to work exactly the same way, it is perhaps not surprising that which sacrament we are considering changes considerably the arguments we have to use to argue this question. Matrimony and Reconciliation both have features that put the moral causality view on very strong ground -- Matrimony is a covenant and Reconciliation a tribunal, which are both things we at least sometimes already associate with moral causality (in the sacramental sense, not necessarily other senses): contracts and courts often effect things by providing agents reasons for doing something. On the other hand, the Church Fathers talk about Baptism and Confirmation and Eucharist in terms that make it difficult to see how one could give a moral-causality interpretation of what they say (and, in fact, it's not uncommon for moral-causality theorists to make a special exception for the Eucharist due to the doctrine of Real Presence). It seems that the easiest path here is to be pluralist: take Matrimony and Reconciliation to work by moral causality and the rest to work by physical causality. This loses a nice unified account, but it would make some sense for the sacramental causality to work by both moral causality and physical causality.

Nonetheless, while it's certain that each sacrament has a moral causality (they can all be seen as a kind of prayer, for one thing. and beyond whatever they do themselves they each may also be offered up in prayer for further grace), I think physical-causality theorists should hold the line, and hold that all the seven sacraments properly work by physical causality. This does raise some questions, that have never adequately been answered, about Matrimony and Reconciliation/Penance. (Perhaps relatedly, Thomas Aquinas, who does very well in the Summa Theologiae in expounding a plausible version of what later came to be called the physical causality view, never completed his discussion of Penance and never got to Matrimony. What he does say about Penance suggests that he was thinking of the human beings involved as the sensible instruments, and thus God working inwardly in them gives the physical causality for grace to them. As far as I know, no one has ever really developed this.) 

There are some very solid reasons for being a physical-causality theorist. The Tridentine formula for sacramental causality is that the sacraments contain and confer grace, and while moral causality theorists give us at least a roundabout sense of 'confer', they tend to go quite squishy and difficult to pin down when they talk about the 'contain'. Melchior Cano claims that the sacraments contain grace 'morally' -- which seems to equivocate on 'morally' again -- in the way that a purse filled with gold contains the price of a ransom. It's very difficult to figure out what this means, although this is not wholly Cano's fault -- he seems to have the idea that grace is contained in the sacrament by way of a sort of designated status of some kind (a purse holds the price of a ransom purely because the gold inside is designated to fulfill an already existing function of paying a ransom), and social ontology is a philosophically tangled field. But in the purse example, the price of ransom is contained in the purse only because the gold designated for the price is already, and independently, literally contained in the purse; there isn't obviously anything like this in Matrimony or Confirmation. (Cano claims that the thing contained is the blood of Christ, which is unilluminating when you want to know how.) Louis Billot tried a different route, holding that a sacrament is a title for the right to grace; but it's equally unclear what it means to say a title 'contains' that to which it gives right, since we don't normally talk about (say) the deed of a house 'containing' the house, and if we did it would almost certainly be a metaphor for something else. Moral causality externalizes the actual causal work of the sacraments, since moral causes only induce a physical cause to act, which makes it hard for moral causality theorists to say how the grace could possibly be said to be contained in the sacrament, since it is in some sense caused outside of the sacrament. Physical-causality theorists have no problems with this at all. And nothing prevents a physical-causality theorist from also recognizing that the sacraments have a designated status and are capable of being juridical titles within the broader covenantal framework, beyond their causality for their proper effects.

Inside and Outside

 The dual existence of form is the heart and core of Thomistic noetics; it is another vitally important application of the real distinction between essence and existence. The same form exists in knowledge, and it simultaneously exists outside of knowledge. In its existence in knowledge it is called specieslikeness, similitude of the thing. In its existence outside of knowledge it is called form, inner cause of determination, perfection. Because of the fundamental dualism of existence, the same form can be immanent and transcendent, in thought and outside of thought. The act of knowing can take place in the innermost depths of the intellect and nevertheless attain things which are outside of thought, fo rthat which determines the thing determines the thought of the thing.

[John Frederick Peifer, The Concept of Thomism, Chrzastek, ed. Cluny Press (Providence, RI: 2026), p. 199.]

Links of Note

 * David W. Wood, The 'Mathematical' Wissenschaftslehre: On a Late Fichtean Reflection of Novalis (PDF)

* Gregory B. Sadler, Virtue Epistemology and the Moral Conditions of Knowledge: Contributions from Phenomenology

* Owen Cyclops has illustrated the Summa Theologia

* Andrew Higgins, Exploring Invented Languages, discusses Virgilius Maro, at "Elvish Musings"

* Disintegration Sensation, at the Lyceum Institute

* Jonathan Bate, Aristotle and the so-called Tragic Flaw, at "Jonathan Bate's Literary Remains"

* Joanna Chavez, A Day in the Life of Mr. Bennett

* Bernard Mees, The first Scottish mention of King Arthur, at "The Age of Arthur"

* Marco Costantini, Changes in Kant's Moral Thought Between 1762 and 1763 (PDF)

* Kevin Dorst, Bayesians Commit the Gambler's Fallacy, at "Stranger Apologies"

* What It's Like to Be a Worm, at "Asimov Press"

* Tiago Faleiro, Iris Murdoch's Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals

* Ramya Yandava, Stop adapting only half of Wuthering Heights, at "Soul-Making"