This starts the notebook that was begun December 2018.
Philo's pancratist as a model for the true politics
criminal confessions as gap-filling evidence sources (their primary value is filling gaps from other evidential sources)
case-building vs truth-discovering evidence
the gradival aspect of confirmational character
baptism : Greek (mystery religion) :: confirmation : Latin (Roman soldier) :: ordination : Hebrew (priesthood)
Mathematical excellence requires more than technical ability; it also requires contextualizing ability.
deciphering as a causal inference from effect to final cause (pattern of effect to why that pattern is the pattern)
Through law and through grace we may possess by anticipation what we do not have in actual possession.
Forensic accounts of justification assume that title by grace works very much like title by law.
Baptism on the human side always involves water, blood, intention, Spirit, but sometimes one is more obvious.
(1) water, proper intention: adult sacramental baptism
(2) water, vicarious intention: infant sacramental baptism
(3) blood, proper intention: martyrs
(4) blood, vicarious intention: Holy Innocents
(5) desire, proper intention: St. Dismas
(6) desire, vicarious intention: infants intended to be baptized
-- Note that this explains why the Holy Innocents are poss. unique -- only God could be the source of vicarious intention in cases of baptism of blood.
-- On the divine side is Spirit. Perhaps one could distinguish two cases, baptism-relevant, in a way exemplar and preconditional, for baptism:
(7) Spirit, proper intention: Christ's Baptism
(8) Spirit, vicarious intention: Immaculate Conception
"The essence of sportive hunting is not raising the animal to the level of man, but something much more spiritual than that: a conscious and almost religious humbling of man which limits his superiority and lowers him toward the animal." Ortega y Gassett
Every freedom has a kallipolitical, a timocratic, an oligarchic, and a democratic interpretation.
forms of superpower in superheroes
(1) natural talent: Superman, Wonder Woman
(2) artificial/acquired talent: Spider-Man, Daredevil, Flash, Fantastic Four, Black Panther
(3) honed skill: Green Arrow, The Shadow
(4) suit/vestment: Iron Man, Ant Man, Ralph Hinkley
(5) tool: Green Lantern, Michael Knight
--perhaps patronage should be on this list as well
MacIntyre & virtue aesthetics: While looser than things like sports, arts and crafts are coherent and complex forms of human activity, etc.
If probability is tied to frequency, it makes sense to measure it between 0 and 1 (by fractions); if it is tied to subjective assessment of some kind, however, there is good reason to think that there can be surplus in either direction.
-- an interpretation of Sartre's Being and Nothingness as about the phenomena of reading, writing, being read
two means of storytelling: re-enacting performance, narration
Esther obtains by title of grace salvation for her people that goes beyond title by law.
Boole takes = for secondary propositions to be synchrony.
x(1-x)=0
(1) It is impossible that there be a class of members who have a quality and do not have it at the same time.
(2) It is impossible for a proposition to be at the same time true and false.
(3) It is impossible for an argument to be both sound and unsound at the same time.
co-soundness of arguments
A is co-sound with B, B is co-sound with C, therefore A is co-sound with C.
(A=B), (B=C), therefore (A=C)
"Piety and love of man are related virtues." Philo
"The lives of those who have earnestly followed virtue may be called unwritten laws."
modalities as characterizing ways of being the same
titles of right to govern (Rosmini)
(1) Arising from prior right of ownership and dominion
---- (a) title of absolute being
---- (b) title of fatherhood
---- (c) title of seigniory (lordship)
---- (d) title of ownership
(2) Not arising so
---- (a) arising from unilateral action
-------- (i) peaceful occupancy
-------- (ii) forced occupancy
------------ (a) out of just self-defense
------------ (b) out of just defense of others
---- (b) arising from combined act
Russell gives an other minds account of external world in ABC of Relativity ch. 2.
baptism : Word as Son :: confirmation : Word as Christ :: ordination : Word as Savior
rights following directly from the adoptive aspect of baptism in itself: right to express thanks to God, right to give first honor and submission to God in all things without exception, right to acts of piety
A difference in measurement is due to a difference in either the measured, or the means of measuring, or the act of measuring.
difference-difference principles
Poisson takes 'probability' to mean the reason we have for thinking an event has taken place; this is measured by the standard ratio.
"As the realms of day and night are not strictly conterminous, but are separated by a crepuscular zone, through which the light of the one fades gradually off into the darkness of the other, so it may be said that every region of positive knowledge lies surrounded by a debateable and speculative territory, over which it in some degree extends its influence and its light." Boole
materiality as travel-resistance
While there is a conventional aspect to coordinates, the theory of tensors as used in physics establishes that they involve using a convention to describe real facts, even if only in a limited or relative way.
"When the most important subjects are investigated by insignificant men, they typically make these men important." Augustine
"Pro veris probare falsa turpissima est." Cicero
Every human person is a sublime catastrophe.
due process as a moral notion and detraction, calumny
knowledge as that cognition such that error is ruled out and it does not vacillate under rational opposition
Augustine's recommendations among Platonists (De Civ 8.12): Plotinus, Iamblichus, Porphyry, Apuleius
"various saints in various ways excel one another in applications of the various virtues." Aquinas (Sent 3d36q1a2ad1)
To search for the truth is already to have a first glimmering participation in the truth, even if that truth is far distant.
Promises and gifts overlap; one may give by promising.
Vows are simultaneously moral and ceremonial.
academic prose and anodyne tone -- much academic prose is concerned with dampening the ability to dispute points (nonprovocation in presenting the disputable, to minimize dispute except along certain channels)
principle, beginning, origin, source, font, spring, cause, author
elements of a political stance in democratic politics
(1) badge of superiority (marks Us off from Them)
(2) disaster to avoid (associated with Them)
(3) enemy (Them)
(4) consumption practices (how We buy and support as Good People)
(5) propaganda practices (how We communicate the Truth)
(6) slogan content (the Truth We communicate, which only They fail to see as obvious)
We only respect teachable doubt; unteachable doubt, doubt involving a refusal to learn, is an object of annoyance, contempt, and dismissal.
ekas demos, remote from the people
Augustine plays on this for the Akademeia; cp. Diogenes Laertius, who holds that the original name was Ekademia in Lives 3.7-8.
followable claims [ plausible claims [ probable claims
A shadow is a form of causation (hence the need for an obtruder).
shadow-casting & light-blocking
puzzlement stance and empty question
-- one sees this with self-standing ? in comics etc.
the difference in comics between ?, !, and ...
'authors to whom the laws of words are attributed by the consent of all'
Grammatical rules arise not directly out of the language but out of how language is used to talk about itself.
We speak for the sake of teaching or bringing to mind.
"The use of words should itself already be preferred to words: words exist so that we may use them. Furthermore, we use them in order to teach." Augustine
The use/mention distinction is a distinction between two kinds of use.
words as signs, as instruments, as expressions
While relevant evidence can make the plausible probable, relevant evidence can make the implausible probable, as well. Does this still involve a significant distinction (of kind of relevant evidence, of kind of probability)?
the value of a jury as being a nonmonolithic perspective
No form of inquiry considers all evidence promiscuously; part of the structure of inquiry is its admissibility conditions for evidence, for the kind of inquiry it is.
evidence // diagram in geometry
admissibility of evidence // postulates (admissibility of diagrams)
propositional force as a form of usability in reasoning
One of the difficulties that faced logical positivism in general is the sheer volume of things that had to be assumed even to get it off the ground, because it is in fact not based on a few select shared principles but on a general impression (of how science works) for which principles were sought.
All terms in any actual scientific theory seem to be both theoretical and observational (as Whewell had suggested to begin with). 'Empirical laws' like PV=rT require a lot of prior theory; 'theoretical laws' require a lot of empirical grounding.
Formalizing should always be for a specific purpose.
the Rocky movies and 'chin' as a moral quality
the allegorizability of sports as an important part of their character
"To give them as much credit as possible, words have force only to the extent that they remind us to look for things; they don't display them for us to know." Augustine
sense : reference :: intellect : will
Ambiguity is not something that wanders into expressions; it is something squeezed out of them.
William of Sherwood's rule for supposition of subject: The subjects are such as the predicates have allowed.
The meaning of a statement lies in its interrelation of signs as terms, not in its 'expression of a state of affairs'.
There is no single 'simplest sentence form' in which a word can occur. If we take Carnap's 'stone' example, we get not only 'x is a stone' but 'a stone is F', 'Use a stone', 'Stone!', 'That is a stone' (which is different from 'x is a stone'), 'A stone exists', 'What is a stone?' and endless others.
Suppose that someone invents in an artificial language the new word 'x', a word of the class 'variable', and proposes a sentence, 'Everything is x or not x'. How would you trace the meaning of 'x' to observations. Its meaning is based on what you want to do with it, not on observation. And no, do not be so stupid as to tell me that variables in artificial languages are not words.
Artificial languages primarily express attitudes, and only secondarily describe anything, a feature that they derive from the combination of natural language within which they are constructed and the specific task to which they are put.
Let us grant to metaphysicians the freedom to use any form of expression that seems useful to them; the work in the field will sooner or later lead to the elimination of those forms for which people have no real use. Let us be cautious in making metaphysical assertions and critical in examining them, but tolerant in permitting linguistic forms.
'There is an n such that n is a number' does not follow from 'Five is a number' unless there is understood 'There is a five and five is a number'.
Truth in fiction is a sign of truth in understanding of things.
There is no particular reason to think that the set of 'observation sentences' (in Hempel's sense) that pass a given empirical test would be consistent.
Carnapian explication and the synthetic a priori
The empiricist criterion of meaning does not provide a reasonably close analysis of the commonly accepted meaning of 'intelligible assertion' or 'sentence that makes an intelligible assertion', nor does it provide a consistent and precise restatement and systemization fo the contexts in which 'intelligible assertion' is actually used.
