This ends the notebook finished in July 2018.
position: moral judgments express beliefs (cognitivism)
Either (1a) the beliefs are sometimes true or (1b) never true = error theory.
If (1a), then either (1a1) such judgments are not just about human opinions, or (1a2) they are only about human opinions = judgment dependence theory.
If (1a1), then the other things are either (1a1a) natural facts or (1a1b) 'nonnatural' facts = moral nonnaturalism.
If (1a1a), then these natural facts are either (1a1a1) reducible to other natural facts or (1a1a2) are special kinds of natural facts = Cornell Realism.
If (1a1a1), then they are reducible either (1a1a1a) to analytic connections = analytic functionalism or analytic descriptivism, or (1a1a1b) to nonanalytic connections = moral reductionism.
-- There is an argument to be made that all are good for some subdomain of moral beliefs and none for all.
Moral noncognitivists confuse accounts of secondary functions with accounts of primary character; cognitivists tend to confuse some subset of moral beliefs with the whole.
the base conversation of philosophy and its eddies and waves
the self-organization of the base conversation of philosophy
the supersalience of obligations
Ideal standards are higher-level truths about possibilities.
If the 'argument from queerness' in metaethics worked, a counterpart would also work againsts possibilities and counterfactuals.
There is a common sort of belief-conservatism that, not a belief itself, is a reluctance to regard beliefs outside a certain circle.
Instead of thinking of resemblance, contiguity, and causation as relating ideas, Hume would have been better served to think of resemblances, contiguities, and causations as the ideas themselves.
Liberties are governed by good taste.
Any society of genuinely free people will always have a concern for upholding the customs, sentiments, and cultural myths of those people.
reconstruction of the proximate problem for a position as a HoP technique
An adequate theory must function semiotically as a complete description of that to which the theory is supposed to apply.
objective immortality (God), collective immortality (Church), individual immortality (self)
Discussion of freedom of speech is too often on market principles and not enough on personalist principles.
While other sounds can be music-like, music is always taken as being from a source, and, what is more, directly or indirectly from an intentional source.
the two aspects of music qua listened-to: concatenation and architecture
The saints in heaven fulfill both the commandment to love God (by union with Him) and to love neighbor (by intercession) in the highest degree.
evangelism as intercessory prayer
The three major moral relativisms -- subjective, objective, and might-makes-right -- are each inconsistent with free society in different ways.
position: free will attributions are true
Either (1) it is sometimes true or (2) it is never true = error theory = hard determinism.
If (1), either (1a) the possibilities are sometimes substantive in themselves, or (1b) they are purely attributive = compatibilism.
If (1a), either (1a1) they are so as nondeterministic natural facts or (1a2) 'nonnatural facts.
If (1a1), then either (1a1a) they are reducible to more basic natural facts, or (1a1b) they are a special kind of natural fact.
If (1a1a), they are either (1a1a1) rigorously reducible (by strict correspondence) or (1a1a2) only loosely (more vague, like reducing 'fatigue' to bodily processes).
--- libertarianism is (1a); radical libertarianisms are either (1a2) or (1a1b).
by-which, through-which, and to-which truthmakers
Philosophers of science often use 'mechanism' when they mean 'mediation/mediating event'.
Formulating empirical canons requires presupposition of logical principles.
As the account of common good, so the account of human dignity.
Lullian art as recombination plus filtering by appropriateness to mind
descriptions of God in Kabbalah as actually descriptions of our knowledge of God
Perhaps patron saints (exemplar, emblematic, etc.) should really be classified in terms of aspect of salience in prayer: example, event, link to something analogous; or resemblance, contiguity, and presentation of ideal).
By its orative mode, Scripture works as a transformative agent within us. Scripture works upon as as an external transformative agent by its preceptive mode (authoritative imposition), by its revelative mode (manifestative doctrine), and by its exhortative and exemplificative modes (enticing counsel).
Interests do not ground rights but only negotiating positions.
"Pride is a dreadful sophist." Marcus Aurelius
'Natural habitat' should be defined relative to function, not vice versa. (The 'natural' can only be read as 'natural to'.)
"Not to have a criterion for picking out some happenings as relevant and others as irrelevant is simply not to be in a position to write history at all." Danto
Experimental replication always presupposes a system of standardizations.
A physical equation is a description of a family of causal actions (or interactions), e.g., causing force to be such causes either mass to be such or acceleration to be such, according to this pattern; causing force to be such is causing mass or acceleration or both to change in such a way.
-- What equations describe in experiments is thoroughly causal.
systems of lie, forcing people into dishonesties to survive (Havel on Communism, Douglass on slavery, Orwell on totalitarianism, etc.)
Transitivity of parthood requires univocity of parthood.
We cannot think very specifically about potentiality without thinking in terms of either the (immediate) actuality or the exemplarity to which it is related.
Stripping hylomorphism of prime matter seems to push it toward a monadology.
Fusions being entirely arbitrary, it is unclear what non-ad-hoc reason one could have for requiring them to conform to weak supplementation. Why not have a fusion of only one thing (a sum of x and nothing) or a fusion with nothing but such a fusion as its part, etc.? Why not allow limit cases? Indeed, why not allow the empty or null fusion (the sum of nothing and nothing).
To engage in business solely for profit is like engaging in sex solely for pleasure; if it really is the sole end, the whole work is sterile and hostile to persons. Profit should be to business like the bloom on youth. The natural ends of business are to make and do good.
purgative, illuminative, and unitive approaches to the sacrament
Good diffuses itself. // Everything actual acts.
-- it seems we could have a version for all coextensive transcendentals, e.g., Truth manifests itself. Both one and beauty are tricky, perhaps; think about this.
Grace gives us a new kind of role in divine providence.
Every argument has further ramifications.
(1) Functional ramifications: Every argument relates to the fulfillment of some preferences in some way, either impeding (creating a problem with desiderata for a solution) or facilitating (creating a question of next step, if there is a remained, or consolidation, if not).
(2) Conditional ramifications: Every argument has uncontrolled effects (e.g., logical implications) and carry you along to them.
(3) Informational ramifications: Every argument creates new alternatives and thus opportunities for decision.
the Lateran Councils as repudiating various attempts to subordinate the Church
Determinism confuses the way we know (abstracting from irregularities) with the way things are.
There is nothing like factional politics to teach us how close everyone is to irrationality.
Human nature has an intrinsic dignity; it is adorned by an extrinsic dignity through law; it receives a dignity both intrinsic and extrinsic in grace, which elevates both human nature and law.
the internal liturgy of the soul
-- The sacraments link the external liturgy with the internal.
thought-provoking vs thought-stilling uses of music
Subminimal accounts of external world
(1) Suppositional
(2) Conflational
Minimal (Pre-Causal) = Humean = (1) + (2)
Causal (Minimal + Causal account)
Exemplary (Causal + Principle of resemblance)
structuring principles of our experience of the external world
(1) supposition (coherence)
(2) conflation (constancy)
(3) causation (activity)
(4) exemplation (exemplarity)
-- perhaps (5) valuation
progressivism as secularized enthusiasm (in the eighteenth century sense)
Something's being actual, as such and on its own, explains some possibilities, but something's being possible, as such and on its own, explains no actuality.
Probabilities must always depend on some actuality or actualities giving the possibilities a specific weighting.
The picturesque is the object of an act of collecting/framing/composing.
the picturesque as that which pleases generally in light of the concept 'picture'
All Kantian schemata are cognitions of time, or at least specifically temporal cognitions.
The modern age is the age of obfuscation; it is what we do best.
"How could that which does not make a man worse, make life worse?" Marcus Aurelius
It is impossible to discuss real-life moral judgments without running into linked aesthetic judgments.
"One and the same thing is capable of being universally and constantly pleasing only if it is morally right." Seneca
Mistreatment of pets is morally wrong because pets are direct contributors to the common good of the human race; this is why they get semi-human treatment. Other animals are more indirect contributors, and yet others are contributors only in the sense of being part of an environment that is part of the common good qua environment. This is all independent of attitudinal reasons for treating animals well (e.g., the Kantian, and correct, notion that treating animals well is part of treating humans with respect).
It's pointless to define a possible world as a maximally inclusive conjunct of propositions unless one gives the standard relative to which its inclusion is maximal.
necessary and sufficient conditions are modalized and should not be interpreted in terms of the material conditional (cp Akram, "Burn All Your Textbooks")
"Natural laws never retain full, stable force outside Christianity." Rosmini
"The human person is an end because of the divine element which informs it."
"Restoring the correct use of language is one of the means of helping towards mutual understanding in many difficult matters."
The Church is (1) a family society in the supernatural order and (2) a cosmopolitan society in the supernatural order and (3) a monarchical society anticipatory of the higher society of heaven.
The sacrament of marriage is a bridge between the family in the natural order and the family in the supernatural order.
Virtue is the only thing that is preparation for all disasters.
"It is necessary both that we should be our own masters and also that our salvation should be of God." Nazianzen
NB that Augustine does not say that the intention in sex in Christian marriage must be to generate children, but that the intention in generating children must be to give them to be regenerated in On Marriage and Concupiscence ch. 5. The use of sex for gratification of lust rather than desire of offspring is a bad use, but desire of offspring is itself merely natural, and the evil of the bad use does not eliminate any good, anymore than being lame undoes the good of what you can nonetheless do despite being lame. And sex for pleasure Augustine recognizes as permitted, despite imperfection, in the marriage, because the marriage itself maintains the end.
Billot's argument against 'physical' causality in the sacraments is absurd; one might as well argue that material things cannot be instruments of divine acts because divine acts are spiritual "which of its nature excludes dependence on the material."
The causation of the sacrament involves both exitus and reditus; every sacrament is a circle of sorts.
Calvin's account of the sacraments is literally that they exist that we might beg.
Scripture tells us that there was a virtue in Christ's humanity that went out and healed, and Ephesus says that Christ's flesh has vivifying power. What is more, real presence must be causal, but it cannot be merely moral. Thus the causality in the major sacraments must be more than merely moral. (Merely moral causation is that of the sacraments of the Old Law and of some sacramentals.)
"Vice mimics virtue." Cyril of Jerusalem
Trent rules out occasonalism for the major sacraments (which must both contain and confer grace).
moral causality
(1) occasional
(2) communicative
---- (a) meritorious
---- (b) juridical
the sacramental economy as the 'property and effects' of the Incarnation (and more, of course, but Christ's 'ownership' of the sacraments, their belonging to him as pertaining to his person, is important)
The causality of the major sacraments is instrumental, inflowing, pedagogical, and meritorious.
The prayers of the Church are moral instruments of grace whereby Christ, by virtue of or in light of the covenant of His Passion, merits the gifts of the Lord for us.
The sacraments are moral causes insofar as they are prayers.
The sacrament of matrimony is to the natural office of marriage as excellent wine is to good water.
No one has ever given adequate consideration to matrimony as perfective instrument of grace.
