This finishes the notebook completed in September 2018.
Three blocks may be so disposed as to hold a sheet stably when no single block can do so. Likewise multiple persons together may be so disposed as to do what no single person can do. (group agency)
Summative accounts of collective intentionality run into problems with cases in which the intentionality is organized deontically.
groups operating as instruments (armies for generals, etc.)
Memories often include references to other memories; this is a big part of remembering.
indexical, iconic, and symbolic memory
mediational approaches to apologetics: There are two opposing needs/tendencies requiring a mediating principle, such-and-such Christian doctrine or practice is capable of providing such mediation. (Cp Schleiermacher)
The vow of celibacy in the Latin Church is linked to the Latin Church's special charism of evangelization.
Symbolic theology teaches the right use of sensible things.
correlates in civil theology to theistic arguments in natural theology (e.g., Fourth Way / Aquinas on law; design / Maistre on British Constitution; etc.)
There is a dangerous tendency to take rights to be nothing other than powers to force others to do things. Rights can give title to coercion, but they are in fact not naturally expressed coercively -- coercion is remedial, not essential, to the right. The tendency also leads to overlooking that actions have to take into account all of the rights of all of the parties.
Sexual sins tend easily to breed sins of dishonesty.
At-at theories give implausible results when dealing with motion-through == something can be at x at t1 and at x at t2 and still be moving through x despite being at it at both times (which is just a matter of how you are measuring).
Never trust someone talking about development of doctrine if they are not also concerned about avoiding corruption of doctrine.
events that can only be understood as being 'on occasion' of something else: responses, reactions, jarrings, traveling changes
The love of human parents for their children is not mere affection but heavily deontic in character.
The most dangerous corruption is corruption under cover of good intentions.
the chosaliser of symbolism
Bodies are located by commensuration with containing dimensions; but location for other things is not so straightforward (cp. souls, Hume's taste of fig, angels, eucharist, electrons, legal entities).
Every sacrament is a kind of conversion to God.
our capacity to use our own presence (or communication thereof) as a sort of instrument, particularly in interacting with others (e.g., using one's being here to console)
One of the things that seems to have worked very well for Fabius Maximus was his recognition of religion's power to 'reset' a people so that they might rally anew.
Christ is Prophet, Priest, and King, but each as a unique limit case, in a way eminenter, for he fulfills all three not in servile mode but in filial mode.
One of the oddities of human society is that people will actively punish unusual self-restraint.
Nietzsche has a fragment in which he classifies the Gospel of John as Dionysian.
The epistemic advantages of the margins are real, but they are at the margins.
To say that Christ's presence in the Eucharist is substantial is to say that His presence is not merely causal.
kinds of presence, with example
true, not real, not substantial: legal representation
true, real, not substantial: telepresence
true, real, substantial: personal meeting
Hunter-gatherers have a more active involvement in their environment than is usually assumed: they clear out undesirable vegetation and fauna, spread desirables by selective use and sometimes by seeding, and modify the environment to make resources more available.
In any frontier or wilderness setting, food-gathering tends toward an improvised mixture of hunt, trap, forage, farm, and herd. A pioneer wants as diverse a set of options available as is possible. Indeed, this extends well beyond pioneering; small farmers and the like still do this to some degree.
"All these philosophers, so much on guard against the truths that embarrass them, are, so to say, all open to error, if only it accommodates them." Maistre
internal sacramental abuses, with examples
(I) INVALID
--- (A) Incorrect
--- --- (1) Fake: invented rite of ordination for women
--- --- (2) Misapplied: correct rite applied to women
--- (B) Incomplete
--- --- (1) Impeded: anullable marriage
--- --- (2) Interrupted: marriage with no actual expression of consent
(II) INAPPROPRIATE
--- (A) Illicit: consecration by episcopi vagantes
--- (B) Unworthy: receiving consecration in a spirit of disobedience
[I and II are essentially different kinds of evaluation.]
[I is ordered according to severity]
[IIA and IIB, on the contrary, are not exclusive, and this is important: one may innocently do the illicit, due to ignorance, and one may do the licit unworthily, and one may do the illicit unworthily. So they are also essentially different evaluations.]
three distinct standards by which sacramental acts are evaluated: sacramental, jural, and moral
In addition to abuses internal to the sacramental act itself, there are external abuses, e.g., sacrilegious use of consecrated hosts -- that is, desecrations and mockeries.
Categorical and dispositional properties are the same things described differently.
the analogous supplementation principles for compossibility
Note that Austin recognizes infelicities that are not in his taxonomy (e.g., verdictives may be unjustified or incorrect despite being neither void nor insincere).
Because of its occasion, unction admits of cases that are possibly in some sense unjustified, but neither invalid nor illicit nor unworthy (e.g., perhaps the seriousness of the illness is overestimated in an understandable but avoidable way).
titles of interpretation
Idea, Energy, and Power in praying
scalene trinities in praying
Restorative justice requires a retributive framework.
In "Justice", George MacDonald fails to grasp that punishment can be just because it itself is part of resitution and restoration; he also fails to grasp that perpetrators, not merely victims, have a perspective, and perpetrators in being restored to justice recognize the justice of, and sometimes demand, being penalized. The punishment makes up the wrong to the perpetrator; it is the justice of it that makes it up to the victim. When a perpetrator repents, this contributes to reconciliation by admitting the wrong; when he begs forgiveness, this contributes by admitting the desert of punishment. Thus MacDonald's entire discussion is incomplete.
MacDonald's attack on spiritual adoption seems clearly to take it as a merely forensic notion. But this is not true even of human adoption.
Punishment is obviously part of the offset to transgression; this is recognized almost universally. MacDonald's error is to assume that this means nothing can substitute for it, or that being a genuine contributor to offset means being a necessary condition of it. This is because he actually has an extremely harsh conception of justice: if a perpetrator has suffered independently from his crime, he takes this to contribute *nothing* to how justice will work. But this again is almost universally recognized as false.
MacDonald also does not seem to grasp that the sin is the beginning of its punishment. (This is quite clear in his comment on Dante -- he does not recognize that the punishments are symbolic representations of the wrongness of the sins.)
religion beyond the bounds of reason alone (note that this necessarily includes history as well as tradition and mysticism)
responsibilities to parents // responsibilities to ancestors
modes of Christology: Christology proper, Mariology, mysteriology
Much modern political philosophy depends on taking the part for the whole: taking one part of the common good, for instance, as definitive of it.
Contractualism does not guarantee justice, but only the least injustice that could reasonably be had by negotiation.
presential self-knowledge vs common-sensible self-awareness
performatives as language operating in ritual space
'causal powers' of absences // movements of cracks
consent-based ethics as negotiated relativism, the attempt to have the benefits of relativism while avoiding pure social relativism and pure individualism
Nonconvergence arguments for anti-realism often conflate two different things:
(1) there being no objective fact of the matter, in which case talk of nonconvergence is itself as problematic as convergence
(2) there being an objective fact adequately in hand which could explain nonconvergence
winking, shrugging, etc., as micro-ritual
tacit consent as deemed consent
A priori and a posteriori are relative to method.
The subsidiarity of the Incarnation makes possible the solidarity of the Cross.
the layers of the external world (sensation, experience, ampliation)
On the Cross Christ descends into *our* dark night.
People consistently draw the wrong conclusions in Dutch Book Arguments; the Dutch Book theorem establishes that some losses are guaranteed -- it is impossible to have unrestricted betting that does not overall incur guaranteed loss. Two ways to see this, with minor common assumptions:
(1) Betting does not occur in the realm of real numbers; probability does. Thus no betting can ever do more than approach probability theory to a certain degree.
(2) Some propositions, like "I will make no more bets", will not possibly conform to the requirement.
--The question is more complicated if betting is not unrestricted (since it depends on the restriction) or if you change how the probability theory is interpreted.
A rational agent whose sole aim was to maximize monetary profit would not do so by betting.
Grace burns before it saves.
"It is the great achievement of American civilisation that in that country it really is not cant to talk about the dignity of labour." Chesterton
Lust's greatest torment is chastity's expectation.
For every fact understood in context, there is a natural valuation for that context.
Every known proposition has a causa cognoscendi.
Mary participates in the passion of Christus patiens.
God must be judging His Church, given the theologians with whom we are stuck.
Lines in genealogical trees always involve a range of probabilities and, indeed, distinct kinds (because a genealogical record has multiple factors as testimonial and as evidential).
trying things out as the normal activity of the human mind
The assumption of compositionality in meaning tends to be applied without regard for functionality. But propositions are functional, not aggregative, wholes. Intersubstitutability is more like organ transplant than like switching out tiles on a floor.
All epicycles tend to correspond to real phenomena because their whole purpose in the model is to make the model better at tracking real phenomena.
ampliation and the non-univocity of truth value assignments
Rights must be adorned with beauties or people do not defend them.
A society needs people both to come together easily and to be insulated from each other's mistakes and aggressions.
What we call 'human dignity' is sometimes integral humanity, sometimes the possibility of it, sometimes the power of either to signify divinity.
sympathetic knowledge as quasi-presential
Survival is incremental and cumulative in nature.
the person as such -- the jural person -- symbolic vestment of person -- honor as witness to person -- protective circumstances of person (personal environment)
The words of absolution in penance are verdictive and exercitative.
A geneaological tree should be seen as a system of hypotheses confirmed by (usually) testimonial evidences.
The descent into hell is an illumination of souls. (ST 3.52)
the descent into hell & preaching (1 Pt 3:18-20; 4:6)
"The nineteenth century prided itself on having lost its faith in myths, and proceeded to put all its faith in metaphors." Chesterton
philosophy in theology like a curved four-dimensional space embedded in a ten-dimensional space
The standpoint of the martyrs is a eucharistic standpoint.
divertissement as a spreading out of attention and intention
Trading is by its nature a ritual interaction.
Economics is one kind of study of performatives and their results.
Trading failures
(I) misfires: purported trade but void
--- (A) misinvocations
--- --- (A1) nonplay: purported trade without the form of trade
--- --- (A2) misplay: purported trade but with wrong persons and circumstances
--- (B)
--- --- (B1) flaw: trade done incorrectly
--- --- (B2) hitch: trade not completed
(II) abuses: trade inviolation of the spirit of trade
--- (C1) fraudulent or forced
--- (C2) breached
People talk about free markets as if the markets were free, when in reality a free market is one in which the people are free.
"The soul does not die by sin but by impenitence." Chesterton
There is very little though in the politics even of very intelligent people.
"It was in itself a Christian miracle to make Paganism live." Chesterton
While there is a causal influence, the use of notes or a notebook is not merely causal; the notes/notebook are involved in our thinking and not merely an influence on it.
The physical notebook on its own lacks intentionality, nonderived content, or informational update, but using-the-physical-notebook has all of these things.
"...our vices are cured by the example of His virtues...." (Augustine)
"No sinner is to be loved as a sinner; and every man is to be loved as a man for God's sake, but God is to be loved for His own sake."
As morality is a higher advantage and wisdom a higher eloquence, so holiness is a higher morality.
Even among just societies there is gradation; for among just societies one may be more just than the other in this way or that. For there is a creativity to justice that seeks out new ways of being just.
The essential marker of an adequate philosophical account of disease is capturing the notion of something to be cured if possible. Any account that does not do this is already wrong, whatever strengths it might have in capturing other aspects.
accounts of disease based on harm, on failure of the necessary,, on lessening of quality, on nonfulfillment of end
The sacrament of confirmation constitutes the people of the Church as a spiritual militia.
onological principle of noncontradiction (Met 1005b19-23)
by abstraction ->
logical PNC (Met 1011b13-14)
both together by aptitude of intellect for truth >
psychological PNC (Met 1005b23-25)
ontological, logical, and psychological versions of PSR
Xunzi's account of li makes it (a) goal-directed (seeking after desires), (b) social (avoiding contentions), (c) structured (making divisions), and (d) traditionary (ancient kings).
li as that which is necessary for completion
probability: using possibilities to measure possibilities
time: using changes to measure changes
location: using regions (containers) to measure regions
x is a brute fact -> X is capable of being a brute fact -> There is something about X such that it can be a brute fact -> Something about X explains its possibly being a brute fact.
Either a brute fact is possible or it is not. If not, it is impossible. If so, it is either always possible or only sometimes possible. If always possible its possibility is a necessary truth, and is explained as such. If it is only sometimes possible, something must distinguish when it is possible from when it is not. Therefore even if there are brute facts, their possibility requires sufficient reason.
A single psychological study is not better than a common anecdote -- indeed, on its own, it is just an anecdote about a single artificially provoked case. The advantage over ordinary anecdotal evidence is pragmatic -- measurement allowing replication for further confirmation -- and not intrinsic evidential force.
"There is no rationality without turning to the infinite." Marion
Arguments are given on someone's behalf.
discovery strategies: (1) generalize; (2) apply; (3) divide; (4) analogize
"Human life is composed of small actions which accomplish great duties." Gerbet
"Each mark of contempt towards the poor contains a principle of infidelity and the germ of blasphemy."
Sincere joy or sorrow is given a transfiguration by music, becoming then something more easily shared.
"...learning is precisely learning to have a stopping point." Xunzi
"Speeches without proof, untested actions, and unprecedented plans -- the gentleman is careful of all such things."
When Xunzi says that human nature is bad, he takes it to be equivalent to saying that people who do not learn the good nor work at being good are bad.
making-possible, facilitation, making-probable, causation, determination, overdetermination
heresiological invasion, proliferation, metastasis
compatibilism and incompatibilism with respect to free will // compatibilism and incompatibilism with respect to chance
Dreyfus on expertise --
(1) novice : simple techniques and processes, explicit rules for use
(2) advanced beginner: expansion of technical repertoire and of judgment in application of rules
(3) competent: large number of rules requiring focused problem-solving and emotional engagement.
(4) proficient: problem recognition and classification increasingly automatic, as well as rule selection
(5) expert: immediate recognition and classification, passing easily to appropriate action
'the meaning of life': the structuring of the materials of life into means for an appropriate end, by that end
-- this is the broad sense (life given meaning), but we often use the phrase in a narrower sense that requires that the end be not only appropriate but also adequate. (Arguments that without God life has no meaning, for instance, are usually not saying that God is the uniquely appropriate end but that among appropriate ends, God is uniquely adequate.)
Institutes 4.2.1: Note that Calvin switches immediately from 'founded on the apostles and prophets' to 'founded on the doctrine of the apostles and prophets'.
Institutes 4.14.23-26: Calvin argues that the sacraments of the New Covenant are on a level with those of the Old. -- Note that this discussion is extensive and repeatedly echoed later; this is an essential element of his account. -- Note that he also puts Christian baptism and the baptism of John on a level (4.15.6-8), on similar grounds.
the ministries of the traditional minor orders
(1) porter: Christ cleansing the temple.
(2) lector: Christ reading Isaiah in the synagogue
(3) exorcist: Christ healing
(4) acolyte: Christ leading
(5) subdeacon: Christ washing the feet of the disciples
(6) deacon: Christ distributing at the Lord's Supper
(7) priest: Christ offering himself in sacrifice
Those not yet enlightened by the Spirit of God become teachable by reverence for the Church, through which the Spriit teaches, and thus submit to learn the faith of Christ from the gospel, which the Spirit through the Church preserves, proclaims, and preaches.
the Life of Christ as the general miracle: all miracles anticipate Christ, or memorialize Him, or are contained in or are expressive of the Life of Christ
"Grace does not come to man in the abstract, not because grace is limited in its power or efficacy but because there is no man in the abstract." Frederick Wilhelmson
intelligere est communicare
Experiment occurs within a field of observation, and thus depends on the kind of observation.
Duhem's theory of instruments and simulation as part of experimental context
works that express a philosophy vs. works that explore a philosophy
