As always, only dashed off notes.
Hypothesis and confirmation only get us to verisimilitude; a theory of confirmation is indeed a theory of relative verisimilitude.
free indirect discourse in the Gospel of John
the conditions under which contiguity is possible influence?
the gifts of the Holy Spirit as delineating gneeral roles needed in the work of the Spirit (spiritual life)
In a good allegorical poem or tale, real people look flat in comparison. (We get something close to this in Disney's Sleeping Beauty. Usually, however, allegories don't oblige us by putting real people in as characters so that we can see how robust the allegory is by direct comparison.)
projective mereologies
mereology from a point of view
-> compare to interval calculus
mereological relations that vary according to scale
projective mereology, interval calculus, and relativity of simultaneity
"Proverbs are words of exhortation serviceable for a whole path of life; for to those who seek their way to God, these serve as guides and signs to revive them when wearied with the length of the road." Hippolytus of Rome
Extensionality fails for permeating parthood relations.
The scope of an authority is determined by the good it involves.
Heracles as the ideal Cynic (Epictetus 3.22.57; Diog Ep 26; Dio Chrysostom 8.26-27; Julian the Apostate Or 6.187c)
the picture of society found in Jesus' parables
thesis, reason, analogy, example, exhortation
From what we know of Teles of Megara and others, we have every reason to think that much of the famous Cynic tendency to brevity is due as much to how their comments were preserved as anything else.
Countercultures very commonly justify themselves by golden ages, past or future or even at times present in idealized foreign places.
onset-discovery-confirmation-confrontation in horror stories
'Folk psychology' is a folk psychological term.
one's life as containing the total cause of one's death
Brentano's names for intentionality: intentional inexistence of an object, relation to a content, direction toward an object, immanent objectivity
Bayesian epistemology often confuses the provisional with the probable; it registers full provisional acceptance as if it were the same as probable acceptability.
hierarchy of sacraments, of icons, and of doctrines
Dying is the accumulation of vital errors.
Every sacrament is a union of nature, human art, and divine art, although in different ways, and all three play an important role, although in different proportions in different sacraments.
All theology is both dogmatic and systematic.
rhetoric as concerned with vivacity, beauty, sublimity, and novelty of communicated reasoning
Von Wright's logic of change is actually a logic of difference; pT~p can apply just as well to different places or different organizations as times. Likewise d(pT~p) could just as easily be an act of differentiating as an act of changing, and similarly with f(pT~p). One could also take it to be synchronic (logical moments or instants of change) rather than diachronic.
What is called the 'design stance' (Dennett, etc.) is actually many different stances lumped together.
Debunking arguments need not merely the claim that something has gone wrong, but a causal account of the way in which it goes wrong.
communal eating as a metaphor for tradition (banquet, symposium)
musical performance as microtradition
internal sense theory as capturing forms of tradition (qua transmission)
humanitas, misericordia, intentio professionis and the medical profession
(1) One may have powers (capabilities) that are inactive.
(2) Inactive and active powers show that the actual and the potential are two ways things may be.
(3) The actual is prior to an nobler than the potential.
energeia as operativeness, at-work-hood
entelechia as complete-being-ness, persisting-full-grown-ness
literary canons as us-formation
the humanitarian tradition of medicine, rooted in Hippocratic Oath and developing from there
tradition : memory :: inquiry : reason
Knowledge is of its nature a single principle admitting of contrary effects.
Metaphysics IX is a complete answer to Hume, in the sense of providing all the principles required for an answer.
the tradition of how, the tradition of that, the tradition of what
episodic vs habitual (dispositional) tradition
declarative vs nondeclarative tradition
the elative and illative faces of tradition
institutional identity and tradition
the significance of the fact that memory is so naturally described with spatial metaphors
All interpretation presupposes tradition; and there can be no such thing as interpretation without trusting to someone's tradition.
All perception presupposes memory; and there can be no such thing as perception without trusting to memory.
When declarative tradition is distinct and determinate, and those handing it down are sensible and of good character, we naturally treat it almost as if it we had direct perception of what is declared.
Tradition does not merely retain the past; it also holds the present and anticipates the future.
things drawn forth from the more remote treasuries of tradition, collected again that they may be known as if new, pulled together from their dispersion
Although true inspiration belongs to saints, yet some poets not in this group are found to participate a kind of inspiration, not by a divine movement in the proper sense, but out of a natural movement involving sense and imagination.
Tradition in the Church is not primarily of abstract system but of teachings (including icons) and sacraments.
->meditation on icons as one of the ways of receiving the Tradition's treasuries
memory as trace with measure of time
modernity and the pursuit of understanding that does not set things in order
traditions as sources of problem-concerns and hermeneutic anticipations
tradition as a library of templates
The power of reflection incorporates in reflecting the anticipations of tradition, such as, for instance, the anticipations found in the tradition of language, when the latter is an instrument of reflection.
the Hippocratic Oath as a part of the language of medicine -- it is in effect a complex term applied figuratively to the practice of medicine so as to convey its richness and the richness of its end; it is a symbolon, although unlike the Creed it is not applied literally. The same may be said for the Declaration of Geneva, which is, however, generally used more literally, as a rich concept, a complexity capable of being taken as a unified whole for conveying the spirit of the humanitarian tradition of medicine
The Tradition of the Church is in the care of the Holy Spirit as Principal Evangelist.
truth from another
tradition & docility
tradition as public reason
In Tradition the Church draws on itself in order to hand itself down.
the Romantic fragment as allowing the permeation of thought by thought
Middlemarch on self-diffusive good (Dorothea's good on others as 'incalculably diffusive')
the detective story as a metaphor for philosophy
Belonging to a profession involves an implicit commitment to participate in and contribute to a practical tradition of how to handle common problems. Indeed, this commitment is the root of much of the fruitfulness of a profession as a profession.
analogical, best explanation, and criterial versions of design arguments
climates of virtue as encouraging actions of trust
deliberative vs expressive signs (some things, like interjections, are both)
Every assertion implies an intelligible universe.
Liberty of conscience depends on the expectation of conscientiousness, that is, on the concomitant responsibility.
To lie is not an act of love.
Sectarian issues become more intense the more integrated a people become.
guessing as structured by congruity and incongruity
a Bayesianism of guessing, with probability representing degree of congruity
The Church may be called the mother of saints insofar as she brings for their acts from her conception of the end, which works as a seed.
two ways of determining appropriate liturgy
(1) Old Testament worship as filtered through the coming of Christ
(2) Revelation as presenting ideal liturgy
confirmation Acts 8; 19:6
indulgence Nm 12; 2 Cor 2
infused virtues as virtues for the witness of faith
Law is essential to sovereignty.
Rationality is not a matter of having arguments, which human minds can make up with ease; it would be more accurate to say that it is a matter of having arguments of establishable relevance for a coherent problematic serving as its context.
Baptism, confirmation, ordination, and marriage are sacraments establishing entire jurisdictions, or areas of legal regime.
eucharist : priest :: penance : king :: unction : prophet
The right to religious liberty is the right to civil liberty in matters of religion, as arising from protection of human dignity as the condition for just society.
nature as a forum for grace, a stage for scenes of grace
the natural order as in itself implying the possibility of an order of grace (1) in origin (principle) (2) in order (3) in perfectibility
What counts as evidence depends on one's standpoint.
Building a vocabulary is usually needed to find an answer and always needed to communicate it.
Necessity in cognition is universality of form.
Human knowledge intrinsically involves the suggestion of a standard of knowledge to which it may be held.
Knowledge has gradation and admits of more and less, even with the same object.
'what the Lord taught, the Apostles preached, the Fathers preserved, the Martyrs confirmed'
Belief is not of or to propositions but by means of them.
Community requires a common means of communication.
baptism as the mother of creed
care, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity
'the Nemean Lion, which Hera, the good wife of Zeus, brought up and made to haunt the hills of Nemea, a plague to men'
From the intelligibility of the particular and concrete we rise to the intelligibility of the universal principles of the same, thus to catch some intimation of the True.
The liturgy does not merely represent the archetypes of the world's order; it contains and presents them
the Modes of Skepticism as methods for argument-testing
Given the course of the determinism debate, one can easily see that determinists will eventually be accusing indeterminists of something equivalent to 'free will of the gaps' and 'chance of the gaps'; it is already an old argument, but has become less popular due to moral responsibility issues and the complications created by quantum mechanics. But all tendencies are to its return in force.
'God of the gaps' // 'free will of the gaps' // 'chance of the gaps'
-> all of these implicitly get their force by smuggling in the assumption that the other side is only arguing from lack of local evidence to support an otherwise presumptively right closure principle, rather than giving an argument from evidence that that particular closure principle is wrong, or at least presumptively wrong.
The patience of God is the heart of repentance.
Repentance implies that there is a patience in moral law, at the very least in a figurative sense.
doubt : inquiry :: pity & fear : tragedy
Scarcity drives improvement of technique; necessity really is the mother of invention.
disorder in sins against nature
(1) horror of corruption: deviation from reason in favor of arbitrary autonomy
(2) horror of abomination: deviation from human nature (e.g., as self-preserving)
(3) horror of reprobation: idolatry-likeness
Practically every incarnational heresy has implicitly been recapitulated in biblical criticism with respect to the 'Jesus of history' and 'Christ of faith' -- Docetic, Nestorian, etc., And here, as there, only the Chalcedonian is right.
"Whatever reality in its true nature is, it must form a self-consistent, all-comprehensive, and coherent whole; and these characteristics are not found in the world of perception." John Watson
Part of understanding the world is understanding ourselves in our act of understanding the world.
Naturalistic closure principles are imitation conservation laws. (This is very clear when one looks at their history.)
To be an object is to be an object-for; and to be a subject is to be a subject-of.
Nothing is identifiable as many unless it is also identifiable as one.
'the concrete presentation of ideas in definite pictorial form'
Note Watson's correct linking of Newman's theory of development to the idea of the visible church as revelatory.
Not only must a religious ritual be adequate to express in symbol the emotions and ideas of the soul; it must do so in such a way as to unite hearts and minds, which for human beings means it must in some way, direct or indirect, be a shared inheritance.
"The religion which excludes beauty is necessarily of an abstract character." John Watson
A virtuous person cannot but want virtue to be rewarded; virtue is inconsistent with splitting virtue and desert or merit -- virtue cannot deny the intrinsic worthiness and value of virtue.
rational unity as the principle of natural theology
Poetics 1450b16: catharsis and wonder do not necessarily depend on the performance
One problem with many of the speculations about the originating communities of Scriptural texts is that none of the texts (not the Four, not Thomas, not Q if it existed) could possibly be produced by a community that had nothing to draw on but what it contained. Sometimes we have internal indication (e.g., Hellenistic philosophy in the case of John, or Roman words in the case of Mark) or linked external confirmation (e.g., Acts in the case of Luke) suggesting some of this broader field, but often even this leaves us with only tiny patches to reason with.
the need for something like double-entry bookkeeping in historical reasoning
"A very little truth will sometimes enlighten a vast extent of science." Beattie
Charity is efficiently from the whole Trinity and from the Holy Spirit by exemplar appropriation.
Defect occurs either by cessation or by disorder.
Who uses a gift well may merit new gifts, depending on the end of the original giving.
Nothing is moved to the impossible.
Virtues converge to taht which charity provides
charity as a mediating virtue
charity as a provident virtue
Charity sets alight the other virtues, whether acquired or infused, through greater union to the end of any and every virtue.
Love moves the greater to provide for the lesser, equals to commune with equals, and the lesser to contemplate the greater.
prudence and the sigillation of virtue
"A cause is essential to an effect as genus is essential to species, whereas an effect is related incidentally to a cause. For the effect follows on the being of the cause as species follows on genus, unless the effect is something of the cause, since in that case effect will be compared to cause in the manner of an integral part, which is actually and essentially in the whole, while insofar as the effect is soemthing of the cause, it is not distinct from it but one with it." Aquinas
Prayer informs acts of mercy as charity informs the virtue of mercy.
Perception, sensible or intelligible, is not mere hypothesis.
the resemblance of the potential to the actual
Even though resemblance is symmetric, the ground of resemblance may not be, creating a kind of asymmetry. Thus a man resembles the painting of him, but the painting more properly resembles the man because of the asymmetry in teh reason for the resemblance.
Beattie on Cockburn 28 July 1789
internal sense theory as a theory of basic evidence
minatory formulae in philosophical argument
the resemblance of resemblance to sameness
Even though prudence does not directly determine obligations, it is required in order to apply them, and without it no virtue relevant to the obligations can arise.
the second Helvitic Confession is very good on the significance of Scripture as preached
To claim that the Baptism and the Lord's Supper are the only NT sacraments is like claiming that Circumcision and Passover are the only OT sacraments.
the indelible characters as capturing three aspects in how we can, through and in Christ, say "Our Father"
circumcision as indelible visible sign // baptism as indelible invisible sign
Natural faith, hope, and love, despite not being virtues, are the primary natural motivators for many virtues, allowing people to accomplish much that they would not otherwise accomplish, and undergo discipline that would otherwise be too harsh to bear.
