"Men *feel* their own happiness so involved with, and dependent on, that of others, that they pursue both together, even without reflecting on the connection." Cockburn
remedies: ameliorative, corrective, restorative, communicative
Maistre: the eighteenth century partly rigged their philosophy of mind by choosing to avoid 'thought' and using 'ideas' instead, thus building in a passivity that allows them to ignore the activity of the mind
Life itself is reward in advance of merit.
Like commands, estimates have in-force conditions (as in 'This is the current estimate') distinct from the question of true or false.
The 'learning styles' approach to education has less to do with needs of learners than with needs of teachers.
The Kantian conception of morality is of that which allows no excuses.
Regulative principles should not be seen as opposed to constitutive principles; taken as rooted in needs of understanding they can be interpreted as filtering objects (to be accepted, objects must be at least of a sort to fulfill these conditions) rather than imposed.
Even if one assumes them to be mere appearance, some phenomena seem not limited in time -- experienced in time, but not wholly mensurable in temporal ways, having something not temporally qualified. In fact, all intelligible phenomena are so to at least some extent.
Consent is at most the material for a moral situation.
bedazzlement, infinite hermeneutic, absolute
overflow, hyperhorizontality, supremacy
The principle of noncontradiction exerts a demand on us in its own order that is not less than that of moral law.
"In perceiving the infinite, we neither count, nor measure, nor compare, nor name. We know not what it is, but we know that it is, and we know it, because we actually feel it and are brought in contact with it." Max Muller
Even in erotic love, the sublimity of the person is able to be experienced; the same is true of all love, some more subtly, but some more richly and fully.
The experience of the reality of the external world is a saturated phenomenon: it is 'invisable' because it goes beyond; it is not 'bearable' because it is of a sort of limit, not admitting of degrees; it is not captured by analogy, and thus is experienced as a kind of horizonless inexhaustibility; and in terms of modality, it comprehends, and is not comprehended by, the I that faces it, and so is 'irregardable', beyond capture by gaze.
the sublime
(1) sensible: suggestive of intelligible sublime
(2) intelligible: sublime proper
-- natural sublime
---- from magnitude
---- from power
-- moral sublime
---- from greatness of goodness
---- from moral authority
the 'I think' as structuring the 'I feel' (making it 'I feel rather than just indefinite feeling)
as when the trellis tangles with the ivy that entwines
Maritain's sense of being as a saturated phenomenon
conscience as saturated phenomonon (perhaps all moral endowments)
free play of imagination as multi-perspectival (putting ourselves imaginatively in an array of different perspectives)
cinematicity as an aesthetic concept
- unified contrast between expansive & intimate, sublime and picturesque (sublime in the picturesque, the expansive in an intimate frame)
living as being a subsistent natural end
The human being has to "consider in every action, besides the law, also an end" (Kant, Rel. 6:7n)
Kant's B-Paralogism argument on immortality as establishing the possibility of immortality (the immortality-ish character of our capacities)
suspense and the sympathetic sense of imminent harm
skill as a symbol of moral virtue
moral arguments for God's existence
(1) heritage (source of endowments)
(2) law
---- positivist (law requires legislator)
---- naturalist (Fourth Way)
(3) dignity (God as exemplar cause)
(4) destination (Kantian)
arguments for immortality
(1) immortalish character
---- (a) substance (the rationalist Achilles)
---- (b) intellectual capacity
-------- (1) speculative (Aquinas)
-------- (2) practical (Kant)
---- (c) volitional capacity
-------- (1) natural desire
-------- (2) human projects
(2) extrinsic
---- (a) experiential
-------- (1) direct (NDE)
-------- (2) indirect (revelation)
---- (b) pragmatic
the philosophy of videturs
Designation is more fundamental than the relation of identity.
Inconsistency between imperatives cannot be reduced to impossibility of obedience because the latter may be purely accidental.
Do not do both A and B; Do A; therefore Do not do B
// A and B are not both true; A is true; therefore B is not true
Since we can identify inconsistent imperatives we can identify necessary ones (Do not do both P and not-P). But natural language has no natural way of marking these off from non-necessary ones, the way it does for indicatives.
Things may be all in our power to prevent, and not equally feasible or our responsibility to prevent. For instance, some things may be primarily another's responsibility, requiring us to defer to them first, and others may be in our power but only just barely.
"Timelines seem able to make higher-level abstractions (like figuring out what unites zoology and botany) accessible to lower-level channels (like seeing that this is to the left of that." Marc Champagne
the overflow of the mood of heaven
faith, hope, and charity as moral endowments of grace
faith : moral sentiment :: hope : conscience :: charity : love of humanity & respect for oneself
historical scholarship & the dangerous temptation to colonize the past
A hypothesis (contra Davidson): No matter how many sentences a would-be speaker learns to produce and understand, there will remain others whose meanings are not given by the rules already mastered.
-- reasons to think this possible: tone, figurative speech, poetic invention, implicature, allusion
Note that Trent only condemns those who reject books of the canon or unwritten traditions "in conscious judgment".
Caramuel on law
(1) voluntary (purely human)
(2) necessary
---- (a) purely divine, immutable (1st Table)
---- (b) divine-human, inviolable (2nd Table)
---- (c) human-divine, stable (e.g., monastic rule
Caramuel takes the necessary laws to vary by dispensation: purely divine laws cannot be dispensed, divine-human only by God, human-divine by vicarii for God.
Caramuel's six transcendentals: verum, bonum, unum, ens rationis, ens reale, ens artificiale
aperantologia (de ente creato infinito)
current-moment extrapolation vs. future-expectation extrapolation
Act so that the incentive of your action is consistent with the motive to conform to moral law (respect for moral law).
reductions of nomological Box to:
(1) deontic (Malebranche)
(2) logical (necessitarianism)
(3) temporal-locative (regularity)
(4) doxastic (Hume)
(5) epistemic (Descartes?)
omniscience as a postulate/posit of theoretical reason
-- summum verum
-- Note that Descartes's Med IV does for theoretical inquiry what Kant's free will postulate does for practical action.
reasonable wariness with regard to opinions about whose rational foundations you know little:
(1) be wary of the more extreme (relative to the common);
(2) be wary of the easy to accept;
(3) be wary of the self-flattering.
intention as like a truth value
- to say an action is intentional puts it in play on the inferential board in something like the way 'true' puts a proposition in play; it's just a different board.
Structures in model theory are ways of describing. Isomorphic structures are ways of describing to the same effect.
A wedding exists to form evidence.
evidence-forming practices
(much of law is devoted to this)
It is quite clear that suspense does not require certainty because it is often built by letting us know what will happen while dragging out the preparation to its happening, in order to create the looming feeling.
(1) Whatever is mutable does not have form of itself.
(2) Whatever does not have form of itself must receive form.
(3) Nothing can give itself what it does not have.
(4) Therefore whatever is mutable must receive form from another.
early church practices as indicating the resurrection
(1) meeting on Sunday (Mt 28:1; Mk 16:2,9; Jn 20:1, 19; Acts 20:7; I Cor 16:2; Rv 1:10)
(2) baptism (Rm 6:1-6; Col 2:12)
a priori and a posteriori Box
-- deontic is particularly interesting, given Kantianism
-- also interesting is epistemic, given skepticism
-- are there interesting implications for others
-- are there particular conditions for making analogy to alethic?
Note that Anscombe's knowledge without observation is not subject to the KK principle, or similar principles.
role-model standards and a posteriori obligations (WWJD, ahadith, etc.)
- positive laws are obviously such as well
imperfectly rigid (sticky) designators
Intuitions become important and very relevant when we are concerned not so much with proof and refutation as with plausibility and perplexity.
Fitch's argument against Kripke on necessary a posteriori truths assumes an absurdly strict substitution principle (one that itself assumes that we cannot double-label anything without 'descriptive content').
ritual as a symbol of moral standard
skill-relative excellences
the pleasant as a symbol of eudaimonia
