Dashed Off XXXII

 stopdash > period > semicolon-dash > semicolon > comma-dash > dash > comma > space

the Church as bright, blazing, and bannered

the standard connexive schemas (both Aristotelian and Boethian) as capturing kinds of implicature

A crowd of people on a corner can be explained simply by an explanation of each person's being there only if the possibility of their being there together has a distinct prior explanation.

belief vs a sense of believability

Fictional characters can include impossible (inconsistent) versions of themselves.

"When a material body is transported from one point to another, it involves an action that depends on the speed of the body and on the distance it travels. However, the action is neither the speed nor the distance taken separately; rather it is proportional to the sum of the distances traveled multiplied each by the speed at which they were traveled." Maupertuis

(1) Life as such is not title for killing.
(2) Life does not become title for killing even when inconvenient.

One of the natural responses of the human person to reflection on being is to hymn it.

Part of scientific progress has always been aleatory, taking advantage of what chance presents.

from-, to-, and about-experiences

analogical arguments vs metaphorical uses of argument

"...metaphor draws into the intelligibility of the better-known-to-us those things that are lesser-known-in-themselves and thereby builds bridges of language to new concepts only yet incipiently realized in expression." Brian Kemple

metaphor as "the permanent possibility of expanding the field within which logic works" (Deely)

Semiosis is itself a sign of thought, or at least of its possibility.

unlimited semiosis -> God as infinite intelligible

For something to be expressive, there must be something in it by which it can be expressive.

limitlessness of play -> God as infinite intelligible

The sense in which a representamen 'gives rise' to an interpretant is not an efficient causal sense but the form sense of the interpretant being informed by or inclusive of the representamen as mediating its object.

Redescription is not interpretation but only a tool for it.

The permanence of permanent possibility is always from actuality.

Rorty takes it to be derogatory to say that his opponents treat texts as 'honorary persons', but treating texts as 'honorary persons' is just a neutral description of the act of interpretation. For instance, I just attributed this to 'Rorty', when in reality I got it from a text interpreted as 'honorary Rorty', an attribution required by the ethics of honorary persons; and the claim Rorty makes is based itself on treating the texts of his opponents as 'honrorary' intellectual opponents.

* Interpret in such a way that one's standard of interpretation could be consistently treated by a rational being as the strandard of interpretation by all rational beings.
* Interpret in such a way as to treat natural or moral personhood always as an end of interpretation and never merely as a means.
* Interpret according to such a standard of interpretation as could be the standard of interpretation for an ideal republic of letters.

The universe of semiosis cannot be capture in a semiotic encyclopedia, which can only be an articulation of it.

We obviously may use texts without interpreting the texts themselves (as opposed to their context);.e.g., by using it as an example or a lorem-ipsam or in asemic writing.

We know there is a distinction between intentio operis and intentio lectoris, because in readin gthe reader finds resistance to his intention, and also something whose intentional structure continues independently and over against his own intention, as a causal matter of interpretation.

Total depersonification of a text makes it no longer recognizable as a text.

We conjecture in interpreting, but interpretation is not constituted only by infinite conjecture.

Every interpretation is potentially divisible into further interpretations; many of the quirks of postmoder accounts of interpretation repeat the kinds of errors made by people trying to treat the infinitely divisible as the actually infinitely divided.

A lump of clay very obviously has a coherence that does not depend only on what previously happened on the last turn of the wheel; it would be useless for pottery otherwise.

We not only treat texts as honorary persons, we treat persons as honorary texts.

A single interpreter is already an interpretive community.

To experience something as a sign is to experience it as something with more.

cognitive powers as general standing interpretances

Every interpretable sign in use is structured by its aptness to be interpreted, by its actually being interpreted, and by its ultimately interpretation in which the actual interpretation is wholly adequate to its aptness to be interpreted.

As a sign moves from one system of signs to another, it generates new meaning.

The ultimate interpretant cannot be a habit, but only that which makes habit possible.

The interpretant that receives is the interpretant that imposes (active and passive interpretancy).

The notion that you can change your moral standard on the basis of what is pleasant, clever, and useful is the temptation of Eve.

The first step in good parenting, sometimes forgotten, is jsut to be an adult doing adult things in a way that takes into account that there are children around.

For salt to keep its savor, it must stay distinguishable.

Acts don't have to be equivalent to be related.

That truth manifests more fully in dialectic does not mean it doesn't manifest in rhetoric.

The human race has been engaged in a niche construction project for its entire discernible history, niche-building on an extraordinary timescale, and no end in sight.

Finding common ground among values and preferences requires realism about the common ground.

We are able to reflect on our actions because we are able to reflect otherwise.

People often say that standards have risen when they ahve merely become more specific.

Political progressivism changes as city-cores, and thus urbanizing, changes.

Not all grounds are necessarily grounds.

A life is not a vote, and cannot be aggregated as if it were a vote.

Kalambo Falls preserves a 500000 year old wooden structure.

We speak with signs because we are signs.

the infinite intelligible as the Agent Future of inquiry

evidence as a relation to contingent cognition

Inquiry is not merely a matter of finding truths but also of knowing what to do with them.

the virtue ethics implicit in fiction
-- perhaps better: the implied internal aretology of fiction

The verb describes that which makes things communicable.

Gratitude for good makes us more able to seek and find other good.

It is misleading to talk about the social utility of religion because religion is one of the determining factors in social utility, one of the things that makes things have any social utility at all.

We guide our actions by classifying them, giving preference to the relevant classifications associated with higher ends; these classifications establish what counts as success or acceptability of action and its achievement.

Privacy is something we generally only have with the assistance of others.

Elections create oligarchies, and therefore elected offices must be divided in separation of powers.

Mathematics qua liberal art studies and makes use of necessary possibles by means of mental creations; this raises teh question of whether there are necessary possibles for rhetoric.

Intuition is important in mathematics because we learn how to construct mathematical elements form teh appearances of divine mathematical construction.

"Mathematics is that portion of our intellectual activity which transcends our biology and our environment." Errett Bishop

Brouwer takes the intution of twoity to be more fundamental than that of a unit (the unit is conceived as that which may be in a twoity, e.g., that which may be added to something like itself).

Most of the mistakes that are ever made in mathematical proof-writing involve treating as final steps of proof development what are in fact just possible intermediate steps.

Proof by inspection in mathematics generally seems to indicate a case in which the conclusion arises directly from the application of a technique that the very set-up of the problem would require to be already granted as adequate.

A more deeply understood but less adequate method may get you farther than a more poorly understood but more adequate method.

ethical proof by intension and remission of reciprocity

ad hom & ad ver proof in ethical reasoning
-- qualified retorsion
-- Socrates gives an ad hom refutation of Thrasymachus, but as Glaucon & Adeimantus note, this only extends as far as Thrasymachus (it is not ad iud)
-- Polus and Callicles both attempt to give ad ver refutation of Socrates, but fail. Socrates, on the other hand, successfully gives an ad ver refutation of Callicles.

Classics have depth because you can pick them up at different stages and learn more; the depth is in a sense in the reader, and the classic is adequate to it.

We live in a world in which we sometimes benefit by luck more than any skill could guarantee.

Consent does not release from duties.

"Since act remains itself by going beyond itself, and to do this is proper to cognition, act simply speaking is intelligent and thus alive." James Chastek

It is a mistake to think there is a set of texts that are 'open' and a set of texts that are 'closed'; all texts are open and all texts are closed, in different ways.

A problem with Eco's account of metaphor in The Role of the Reader is that the 'Minucius Mandrake' does not seem to be functioning as a metaphor. (Indeed, there are all sorts of problems with using Finnegan's Wake as a source of examples for how languages generally work.) Even on Eco's own account it is more properly an allusive neologism.
-- Eco also consues an argument for metaphor buidling on metonymies -- a common phenomon -- for an argumetn for metaphor depending on metonymies -- a claim taht is, at most optimistic, a stretch. This leads him to ignore innovative metaphors that break or reorganize prior codes, and ignore prior expectations of substitution, and, what is more, the common metaphorical practice of conceit in which one starts with a shocking or jarring metaphor and then creates the substitutions for it. I take any two nouns in different classes and transfer, and *then* explore how viable or interesting or useful the metaphor is for a given context. Again, poets often come up with metaphors driven by rhyme or alliteration (actual resemblance but of signifiers) rather than metonymy. And, of course, metonymies often presuppose metaphors -- we talk about the Crown, when we mean the King, not merely as a metonymy but as a metaphor for royal authority (which explains perhaps why we do not talk about the (Royal) Stocking). We in fact crown as a metaphor, and this gives force to the metonymic use of Crown to speak of the King.

We understand possible worlds by contrast with impossible worlds.

argument by sample argument

We do not value by feeling alone.

creation ex nihilo as a type for divinization (cf. St. Bernard to Peter, Cardinal Deacon)
-- God, fullness of Being, calls forth what is not so that it is. // God, fullness of Love, calls forth that which is nothing in love, so that it is in Love.

St. Boethius

 Today in some calendars is the memorial of St. Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, best known for his Consolation of Philosophy. From his little treatise, "The Trinity Is One God, Not Three Gods":

Theology does not deal with motion and is abstract and separable, for the Divine Substance is without either matter or motion. In Physics, then, we are bound to use scientific, in Mathematics, systematical, in Theology, intellectual concepts; and in Theology we will not let ourselves be diverted to play with imaginations but will simply apprehend that Form which is pure form and no image, which is very being and the source of Being. For everything owes its being to Form. Thus a statue is not a statue on account of the brass which is its matter, but on account of the form whereby the likeness of a living thing is impressed upon it: the brass itself is not brass because of the earth which is its matter, but because of its form. Likewise earth is not earth by reason of unqualified matter,11 but by reason of dryness and weight, which are forms. So nothing is said to be because it has matter, but because it has a distinctive form. But the Divine Substance is Form without matter, and is therefore One, and is its own essence. But other things are not simply their own essences, for each thing has its being from the things of which it is composed, that is, from its parts.

Exemplar Causes

 Exemplar causes (also sometimes known traditionally as ideas*  or original forms) are commonly defined in various ways -- as forms such that effects imitate them out of the intention of agents determining their own ends, as pre-existing substantifying reasons of existing things, as that which an artisan regards in effecting what he determines to be, as that which is the standard of truth and propriety for what is made, as that to which an effect is assimilated and conformed. It is an important kind of cause, and it is not difficult to find cases of it. For instance, in building something one may follow a blueprint; a novelist writes the actual version of the novel he has pre-thought; a teacher may set a standard example that is imitated by students. But what kind of cause is it?

The standard Aristotelian view, of course, is that there four proper causes: efficient (in Aristotle himself the somewhat narrower motive cause), material, formal, final. There are good reasons to think that the exemplar cause is not any of these. It is very obviously not a material cause. It also cannot be a formal cause, because both matter and form are intrinsic or constituent causes, and the exemplar is very definitely separate from the exemplate that derives from it. Thus one might try to make it out to be an efficient cause or a final cause, but in fact the exemplar cause does not have the same relation to the exemplate that the efficient has to the effect or that the final cause has to that which tends to it.

One might hold, then, that it is a fifth cause, and in practice it is often treated as such. However, there is good reason to think that there are exactly four proper causes. In addition, while it can't be an efficient, formal, or final cause, the exemplar cause is suspiciously similar to all three. Indeed, we see this in some of its descriptions: the exemplar is the form which the effects imitate from the intention of agents determining their own ends.

The four proper causes are those to which all causes can be traced back. But there are many other kinds of causes. There is nothing that requires us to say that every kind of causation traces back to only one kind of proper cause, as if these were summa genera of causation. Other causes can arise from the various ways these four interact in the real world. Their causation will, in principle, be explicable in terms of the four proper causes, but this may be quite complex, and it does not mean that the derivative causes are not causes in their own right, only that they are not the most basic building-blocks of causation. When they are causes in their own right, rather than just causal systems, they will have an overall action like that of one of the proper causes (because they will be organized by a particular relationship to a result), but this will arise from the interaction of various proper causes.

Perhaps the most popular, and I think, correct, view of exemplar causes is that they are extrinsic formal causes. Exemplar causes, as I said, cannot be proper formal causes because exemplars are not intrinsic forms. Nonetheless, they function a lot like formal causes. The reason this is possible is that the final cause, as cause of causes, can make it so that something's proper form comes to be in a way that depends on the form of another thing. So in exemplar causation we have two formal causes (that of the exemplar and the exemplate) and the existence of the one is made dependent on the other by the final cause; then the exemplar's form, although separate from the thing, works in a way as if it were the formal cause of the thing.

Exemplar causes are not the only kinds of extrinsic formal cause. I can think of at least two other major ones. Objective causes (which play a role in thought and in signs) are one; they differ from exemplar causes in that exemplar causes explain existence in some way, whereas objective causes complete cognitive and appetitive powers, and are causes of cognitive and appetitive actions being what they are. Another is a kind of causality that doesn't have a convenient name; perhaps we can call it a 'formant cause'. St. Albert noted in his study of mineral formation that 'place' was a cause that couldn't be neglected, and worked like an external form. That is, the boundaries of the surrounding medium contribute to how minerals grow and transform. Molds, like cookie-cutters or the kinds of molds used in arts and crafts and factories, are another sort of cause in this way; they affect the form of something by imposing a direct boundary during its formation. Exemplar causes, on the other hand, are causes of a thing as existing.

Suarez famously did not like this classification of exemplar causes as extrinsic formal causes; as he put it, the efficient cause also has a form on which the form of the effect depends. Thus he held that it was just a species of efficient cause. this is certainly not correct, because unless the efficient cause is itself the exemplar cause, the exemplar cause does not act, but is that according to which something is conformed. Part of the reason, too, that Suarez can get away with this is that he rejects the idea that extrinsic exemplar causes are really exemplar causes, so for him, exemplar causes are always internal to a mind. A view in which a live model is not an exemplar for the painting, or that a blueprint is not an exemplar cause for a machine built according to it, seems a very defective view. And it makes much more sense for us to take these 'external exemplar causes' to be to the 'internal exemplar causes' in something like the way that instrumental signs are to formal signs in objective causes, or instruments are to principal efficient causes. That is, they are 'exemplate exemplars' like instruments are moved movers.

It is true, of course, that an efficient cause always has a form, and that the effect depends on the action of the efficient cause, and the the efficient cause acts because of its form. And this is indeed just what efficient causation is. But the exemplar cause is, as the descriptions of it say, not the form out of which the agent acts but the form with respect to which the effect is formed. These can sometimes be the same, when the agent is also the exemplar, but they aren't necessarily so, and even when they are the same, the agent's being an agent and its being an exemplar are distinct. Some neoscholastic authors attempted to get around this by arguing that the exemplar is a 'moral efficient cause', and presumably an assisting one rather than a principal one, but this seems digging the hole deeper.

In the late medieval and Baroque periods, the exemplar cause and the final cause shared a similar fate; accounts of them increasingly relegated them to being things in the mind. Suarez in fact draws this conclusion explicitly for exemplar causes: he claims that they are only found in intellectual agents. But they are not merely things in the mind, although minds have very special and (for us) very important kinds of them (namely, purposes for final causes and design-plans for exemplar causes). 

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* Our use of the 'idea' to mean (roughly) something definite in the mind is due in great measure to Descartes, who is explicit that he is adapting the traditional notion of 'idea' to his own use. It is very indirect, but Descartes's usage is actually influenced by Suarez's restriction of the exemplar cause, noted below.

And Summer Seas Afoam like Foaming Wine

 Exotique
by Clark Ashton Smith 

Thy mouth is like a crimson orchid-flower
Whence perfume and whence poison rise unseen
To moons aswim in iris or in green,
Or mix with morning in an eastern bower. 

Thou shouldst have known, in amaranthine isles,
The sunsets hued like fire of frankincense,
And noontides fraught with far-borne redolence,
The mingled spicery of purple miles. 

Thy breasts, where blood and molten marble flow,
Thy warm white limbs, thy loins of tropic snow--
These, these, by which desire is grown divine, 

Were made for dreams in mystic palaces,
For love and sleep and slow voluptuousness,
And summer seas afoam like foaming wine.

Life

 In the natural realm, biological living beings act in view of five ends: nutrition, organic growth, self-defense, self-repair, reproduction. The analogies to spiritual life are present in the development of the Church's nourishment from the Word of God, sacred Tradition, and the sacraments (nutrition), doctrinal consideration of the truth (growth), her doctrinal activities of self-definition (self-defense), her movements of reform (self-repair and vital development), and the spiritual fecundity of charity (spiritual fruitfulness). In a wide range of historical contingent circumnstances these processes of a unified life can take on a wide range of expressions (much like a biological individual or species can develop in a wide array of ways in diverse environmental conditions, through time). However, the mystery is that there is only one Church in and through all the conditions of history, and her doctrinal self-expression and self-communication remains one through all time and through all conditions. It is this mystery of organic continuity amidst change that the Church seeks to denote when she speaks of the mystery of the development of doctrine, as an integral dimension of the ongoing life and vital flourishing of the Catholic Church. 

[Thomas Joseph White, OP, Principles of Catholic Theology; Book 1, On the Nature of Theology, The Catholic University of America Press (Washington, DC: 2023) pp. 80-81.]

It Was Six Men of Indostan

 The Blind Men and an Elephant
by John Godfrey Saxe 

It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind. 

The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
"God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!" 

The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, "Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 'tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!" 

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a snake!" 

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
"What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain," quoth he;
"'Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!" 

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said:"E'en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!" 

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a rope!" 

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong! 

Moral: So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!

Evening Note for Sunday, October 18

 Thought for the Evening: The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin

In 1987, Stephen R. Lawhead published Taliesin, the first book in The Pendragon Cycle, closely followed by Merlin in 1988 and Arthur in 1989. Later he followed this up with Pendragon (1994), Grail (1997), and the rather different Avalon (1999), and more recently has added Aurelia (2025), which is the only one in the cycle I haven't read. The first trilogy is truly excellent; growing up, I read them a lot. The style of them was particular interesting -- Lawhead interwove the myth of Atlantis, various stylized versions of Celtic myths, Arthurian legend, and a sort of vaguely Celticized Evangelical Christianity into something that was quite fresh and new.

I was interested, then, to watch the recent streaming series, The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin, which is based on Taliesin and Merlin. I can recommend it quite highly. It is imperfect. It really does not do justice to the excellent story of Taliesin, rushing through it, but its recent success on Amazon Prime makes it reasonably likely there will be a second season, and one hopes that they can at least get more of it in flashbacks. Taliesin is not a household name the way Merlin is, so it's not surprising that they put the focus on Merlin. Still, they would have done better, perhaps, to have given Taliesin a bit more time, even if putting the emphasis on the second book. The rushing doesn't do any favors to the more complicated story in Merlin, either; putting two books into seven episodes is asking a lot of seven episodes. Nonetheless, while parts might be a bit puzzling to people who have never read the books, as an adaptation works quite well.

The series does occasionally show its very limited budget. Of course, since we're talking television, the very limited budget is said to be about $50 million. Nonetheless, I kept comparing it to The Rings of Power, whose first season cost that amount for each episode, and yet, with very occasional exceptions, The Pendragon Cycle looks better. The limited budget required them to find places to shoot, make sets with which the actors had to interact, and actually do something with the outdoors. It all seems quite right, in ways that the undoubtedly more expensive backgrounds of The Rings of Power never have. We also get more action -- sometimes stylized, to be sure, but there are actually things going on that give interest to the scenes.

In adapting the books, perhaps the biggest problem that has to be solved is the music. Taliesin is the greatest bard in the history of the island of Britain, with Merlin having some of the same talent. Music is central to what they do. The books can cheat on this -- we don't need the music, we don't even get the song, we just get prose versions of the stories that were told. The series, I think, probably solves the best way it can without requiring extraordinary musical genius -- the bards sing, but the magic is carried by the reactions. In one scene, Taliesin is singing at a banquet before a strange court, where his people have come as refugees. The song is nothing special in itself, but it's just a platform; what happens is that Taliesin's people start singing along, and King Avallach, to whom they have come begging, who comes from a civilization so advanced that in comparison to it these people are primitive savages, looks around and (in an excellent bit of subtle acting by Daniel Fathers) realizes that this is exactly what his dying people need. That is a good, solid way to do the magic of music on screen.

Because there are so many characters, being pulled in from two different books, the actors don't always have a full time to shine, but I liked most of what I saw. (Pelleas seems unfortunately a bit of a non-entity, but I think this is more of a not-enough-time-for-development problem, rather than an acting problem.) That Atlanteans are all rather magnetic -- which makes it further disappointing that we don't get more of them in their own right -- Rose Reid as Charis, Daniel Fathers as Avallach, and Emree Franklin as Morgian. (Since Morgian is the primary antagonist of Merlin, and the one person of whom Merlin is truly afraid, I expect we will get more of her if the series gets a second season.) The three key characters for the parts of the story that make it into the series are Charis, Taliesin (played by James Arden), and Merlin (played by Tom Sharp), and all three of them work quite well. I also liked Myles Clohessey's interpretation of Uther as suspicious and grouchy but extremely practical.

If you liked the books, you'll mostly like the series. If you haven't read the books, it is worthwhile, as well, although the series will occasionally require you to connect dots that it does not itself explicitly connect because it is only seven episodes long. However, it's no worse than you'd likely get in a movie version, and the series in any case more than makes up for it in other ways.

Various Links of Interest

* Christian B. Wagner, On the Use of Typology in Apologetics

* E. J. Hutchinson, A Review of The Odyssey, Translated by Daniel Mendelsohn, at "New Verse Review: A Journal of Lyric and Narrative Poetry"

* Brian Kemple, Semiotics, at the Encyclopedia of Catholic Theology

* Victor Tamburini, Saying (Nothing) and Conversational Implicatures (PDF)

* James Chastek, Predogstination, A fragment., at "Just Thomism"

* Dan Hitchens, The Making of Roger Scruton, at "First Things"

* Josh Hawthorne, How and Where AI Intelligence Actually Comes From, at "Thinking Out Loud"

* Bill Vallicella, Semantic Engines, Consciousness, Intentionality, and Understanding, at "Maverick Philosopher"

* Brett Mullins looks at the first issue of Mind.

* Nik Prassas, Is Brideshead Revisited the 20th Century's Greatest Novel? at "The Republic of Letters"

* Francisco Fernflores, The Equivalence of Mass and Energy, at the SEP

Currently Reading

Clark Ashton Smith, Zothique: The Final Cycle
Thomas Joseph White, OP, Principles of Catholic Theology: Book 1, On the Nature of Theology
Bernard Lonergan, Verbum
Lara Alcock, How to Think about Abstract Algebra

In Audiobook

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (as read by Rob Inglis)
Jim Butcher, Changes (as read by James Marsters)