The historical present establishes that we are inclined at times to treat the past (and at times the future) as an as-it-were/as-if present.
"In each error, there is truth, insofar as it is thinkable." Lambert
"...that object can only bejustly called sublime, which in some degree disposes the mind to this enlargement of itself, and gives her a lofty conception of her own powers." John Baillie
People always engage in impetratory prayer conditionally.
genuine distinctions, with examples
(1) purely conceptual: what are distinguished are themselves just conceptual ('a is the same as a')
(2) founded conceptual: what are distinguished are things insofar as they are conceptualized (practical & theoretical intellect)
(3) relative: what are distinguished are things as relative (imaginary numbers: i, -i)
(4) modal: what are distinguished are ways the things themselves are (myself yesterday, myself today)
(5) compositive: what are distinguished are things with respect to parts (overlapping regions)
(6) count: what are distinguished are discrete separables (John & Mary)
-- perhaps there's a need for a distinct capability-based distinction
distinctions allowing
(1) true and proper counting
(2) counting in an extended sense
(3) counting in a metonymic sense
(4) no counting
ens (considered as id quod est)
considered in itself
positively: res
negatively: unum
considered relative to ens
to entia in general: aliquid
to cognitive ens: verum
to appetitive ens: bonum
to cognitive-appetitive ens: pulchrum
tiers of philosophy
(1) nascent
(2) regimented
(3) analyzed
(4) systematized
(5) scholastic
(6) civilizational
(7) hypercivilizational
A cognitive power has a material and a formal object, but in addition there is a penumbra of circumstantial associates, what the object suggests as beyond itself, that of which the object is a sign or an effect.
alethics, ethics, aesthetics
Philosophy as dialectical cannot ignore authority; it must be in dialogue with it.
initiators, ultimate organizables, ultimate organizing principles (laws of nature), attractors
Locomotion simply in itself causes nothing. You always need something else like resistance.
The substance is the final cause of its proper accident, and the way in which it is so makes it like an active cause of it (insofar as the accident receives its actual being from the substance) and also like a material cause for it (insofar as the substance receives the accident).
the ubication of a body
We measure the intensity of sensations only by other sensations in context.
- Mercier on exteriorization of sensations ((1) contrast with muscular sensations; (2) double sensations)
Analytic judgments are not purely explicative because analysis does not leave us where we began.
Mercier's version of the principle of causality: A being whose essence is not its existence necessarily demands for the explanation of its existence a cause which brought it into existence.
The intrinsic possibility of a thing is logically prior to its conceivability, which is as it were an effect and sign (in the mind) of the former.
spontaneous belief arguments (a version of PSR argument, combining PSR with the phenomenon of widespread spontaneous belief) for: external world, other minds, secondary causation
The action of the efficient cause is from another perspective the action of the final cause.
order as a transcendental
aspirational arguments for the existence of God
(1) infinite desires
(2) gratitude
(3) postulates of meaningfulness
knowledge as the final cause of logic
Nothing can obligate except by imposing an end.
one, two, etc., in ____ sense
(1) strictest: separable opponent parts
(2) strict and proper: opponent parts
(3) extended proper: opponent relations *or* nonopponent parts
(4) figurative/improper: likeness to something that is (1), (2), or (3)
ens : unum :: res : verum :: aliquid : bonum :: multitudo : pulchrum
While there are obvious reasons why one, true, and good are primary, there seems to be reason to say that there are infinitely many transcendental attributes of being.
Love is that which makes change possible.
loved/able-to-be-loved as transcendental
(I say able-to-be-love rather than lovable because the latter suggests some particular worthiness to be loved, whereas we are here considering something prior to worthiness)
- obv. this will be closely related to good as a transcendental
the sacramental character as title to participate the Passion of Christ, to suffer with Christ in a sacramental way
People are not saved by invincible ignorance; invincible ignorance is a reason to believe, given other truths, that God will act in mercy by means outside of the ordinary. Even then, divine mercy is not a free pass but the grace for people themselves to receive faith and union with Christ.
One danger to justice is the human habit of trying to satisfy fictional debts rather than the debts that are really owed.
the politics of poshlost
existential operator as definite confirmation (confirming case)
Given an ordered set of yes/no questions, an (im)possible world can be represented as a binary number corresponding to the answers.
extensionality as relative invariance
extensionality as relative indifference
Possible worlds only admit of comparison if the model includes the same propositions (or questions & answers).
believing x in light of y
-- a way of thinking about consistent belief-tracks for doxastic logic
half-belief as nonexclusive belief track
The way things look does not depend only on looking.
To know that one knows requires an account of knowledge; merely to know does not.
pragmatism : alethics :: consequentialism : ethics
arousal theory : music :: Modernism : theology
We experience truth not merely as discovery and as knowledge but also as patrimony.
We know each other by causation, remotion, and eminence.
self-identity as an M! operator: Box(a) is equivalent to (a).
Utilitarians, oddly enough, often underplay urgency of need in evaluating pleasures. (I suspect that they often falsely conflate it with intensity, i.e., they treat it as measured by expected intensity of relief.)
sundbuend, lit. 'sea-dweller', used in plural to mean 'mankind' (soundbands)
gastiberend, lit., 'spirit-bearer, man (ghostbearer)
modality -> mereology -> quantification
Ordination does not make fools into sages, nor idiots into geniuses.
Note that Malebranche (TM 2.4) takes duties to be internal movements / impressions of love.
a possibility: intercession of Church Patient works as occasional causality, intercession of Church Triumphant as instrumental cause
sacraments as instruments of grace (First Way), as special participations of divine energies/transcendentals (Fourth Way), as orderings to divine ends (Fifth Way)
Every sacrament, directly or indirectly, links us by sign to a more full form of being that grace makes available to us, and into which we grow as saints.
Virtues are society-forming.
Knowledge being a formal sign, the theory of signs directly affects epistemology.
Knowledge is the world itself as signified well through itself.
uncanny: "anxious uncertainty about what is real caused by an apparent impossibility" (Windsor)
intentions as actional vs propositional attitudes (cp. Lucy Campbell on why the latter should nto be simply assumed)
To try to do X requires doing something that could apparently be dispositive to doing X.
Every poetic 'school' can be seen as a complex of three categories: primary influences, principles, and social interaction among poets.
The farther one moves from Imagist principles, the less sense free verse makes.
metric line vs verse line vs breath-utterance line
1 - Wherever - Whenever - Whoever - Whatever
0 - Impossible place (nonplace) - nontime - nonperson - impossible thing (nonthing)
TOP - somewhere (indefinite) - sometime - someone - something
BOTTOM - nowhere - no time - no one - nothing
A->0 - A is not anywhere at all - A is never at all - A is no one at all - A is nothing at all
1->A - A is everywhere - A is always - A is everyone - A is everything
the four notes of the Church in Irenaeus: Adv Haer. I.10.1; III.3.1
Priests and deacons perform some of their functions from their own orders and some as human instruments, through their orders, of the bishop.
Benedict XIV takes the traditio instrumentorum in the Decree to the Armenians to be concerned not with the matter proper but with bringing accessory matter into conformity with the Latin rite (De Syn. VIII, X, 8)
Our obligations to the Church are not only the natural obligations of interest but also the moral obligations of honor and conscience, and the sacramental obligations of seal and character.
Hume duplicates of worlds // philosophical zombies
a modal logic as a logic with a phenomenology
time: change measured by change
location: place measured by place
probability: possibility measured by possibility
argument complexity: inference measured by inference
peace as a transcendental attribute of being
'permissibly obligatory' and 'obligatorily permissible' as the key modalities for positive law
the firmitas, utilitas, and venustas of the Church as Temple
Pure alethic modality depends directly on the principle of noncontradiction, not on any possible world semantics. Other modalities can combine the principle of noncontradiction with other principles (but the how of this last should be considered in more detail).
We often treat real and rational relations as opposed categories. But the kinds of dispute arising about them suggest that this opposition is not so straightforward. So what if we think of them dimensionally rather than oppositionally? Everyone agrees that to-another with separation is real relation; everyone agrees that self-identity is rational relation. Take these as extremes near an axis, and take everybody to be disagreeing about the field between them and the location of each distinction in 2D space between them.
"...conversation, understood widely enough, is the form of human transactions in general." MacIntyre
the union of the courtly and the homely in the worship of the Church
same-or-other as transcendental distinction (Aristotle Met IV, 2 1004; cp. Met X, 3 1054)
the association of transcendental distinctions with transcendental attributes (potentiality/actuality with ens; sameness/alterity with unum; one/many with unum, etc.)
