Emergency powers create emergencies.
Utilitarianism treats everything as if it were a drug.
the depersonification of the gods
rights of the Church as expressing its royal mission
(1) right to an independent material patrimony suitable to its needs and protecting it from subordination to secular powers
(2) right to proclaim the Gospel
(3) right to provide for those who are poor and in need
(4) right to public ornament and patronage of arts and sciences for common good and the glory of God
(5) right to institutions of private charity and devotion
(6) right to evangelism, catechesis, and provision of Christian education
(7) right to self-governance
(8) right to give first allegiance to Christ the King
The notion of culture depends on a context of traditionary being.
criticism : episode :: critique : plot
The Church has an obligation to insist that it, insofar as Christ is in it, be treated as an end and not merely as a means.
Cush on Lonergan:
| research | experience | be attentive |
| interpretation | understanding | be intelligent |
| history | judgment | be reasonable |
| dialectic | decision | be responsible |
| foundations | decision | be responsible |
| doctrines | judgment | be reasonable |
| systematics | understanding | be intelligent |
| communications | experience | be attentive |
"the end of humanity in respect of sexuality is to preserve the species without debasing the person" Kant
the amplitude of giving as something we must learn
While all conventions are in some sense contingent, they vary considerably in meaningfulness, plausibility, integrity, and utility.
"...it is impossible to take any particular hold of the English schism, for it is not a religion in itself, so much as a mixture composed of every heresy, excluding Catholicity, the only true religion." Liguori
the display economy of academia
three elements of inculturation:
vigilance, edification, concentration (there is a fourth, exaltation/transfiguration, but it is in divine hands)
There are no purely private obligations; even obligations of conscience do not work that way.
We assert arguments, or else do something arguments that is very like asserting.
structural, thematic, and functional comparisons of arguments
The Pyrrhonian attempts to treat all of his own arguments as hypothetical and all of his opponent's arguments as categorical.
three kinds of name (Mohist Canon A78): da (unrestricted), lei (classifying), si (private)
three general rules of analyzing business and finance
(1) conservation: nothing comes from nothing
(2) entropy: there is always deterioration (wear and tear)
(3) friction: an operating business is always in the process of solving as-yet-unsolved problems
-these can prob. be generalized to all organizations
precedential, analogical, and semiotic constraints on sacramental theology
"It [Rome] had the habit of relics, the higher way of mind and lower business organization to deal with them." Charles Williams
relics vs antiquarian curiosities
Arguments can be used literally, suggestively, or ironically; suggestive uses can be partial, concomitant, or analogical.
artificial classification // nominal definition
real : nominal :: natural : artificial
World Resource Institute "Shift Wheel"
(1) Maximize awareness: be more memorable, constrain display, enhance display
(2) Evolve social norms: inform about the issue, make socially desirable, make socially unacceptable
(3) Minimize disruption: replicate the experience, disguise the change, form habits in new markets
(4) Sell a compelling benefit: meet current key needs, deliver new compelling benefit, enhance affordability
sutras as like the alphabet or multiplication table for a system of thought
higher and lower sacramentals
- integral components of sacraments would be higher, as would the sacramentals that the Church reserves for ordained clergy
- in general dispositive sacramentals would be lower
- 'higher' and 'lower' here are of course relative to major sacraments (highest); perhaps 'proximate' and 'remote' would be better
deflationary account of truth → deflationary account of cognition
Beliefs have fuzzy borders.
"..all specialists tend so to consider humanity as divided into themselves and the mass to be affected." Williams
- an unusual design argument, Crowley's argument for the reality of Aiwass based on The Book of the LAw -- see Confessions ch. 49 and also the introduction to TBotL.
- as with other arguments of this sort, it is an appeal to the results of a kind of scholarship, in this case, Crowley's idea of Qabalah
the intertwining of the en soi and the pour soi
The body as factually given is already instrumental.
Post-medieval approaches to philosophy seem regularly to founder on taking the important to be the primary and the primary to be the sole, for almost every field. This makes them very useful for exploring things in hypothetical isolation and not so useful for anything else. You can genuinely learn a lot about the cogito from Descartes, transition of imagination from Hume, awareness of tools from Heidegger, or models from Carnap, but in each case things worth considering are explored as if they were the only thing to consider.
The Thomistic position on the unity of the substantial form has the implication that the body in itself has a character relevant to intellect and moral will.
The problem with Harman's attempt to reduce enumerative induction to inference to the best explanation is that enumerative induction is not generally to any explanation at all, but to something in a form so as to be an explanandum, or an explanans for other things entirely.
Ontological arguments // Abstract Objects
---- (1) from idea (Ideological)
---- (2) from possibility (modal)
Cosmological arguments // External World
---- (1) Primacy
---- (2) Maximality
---- (3) Purity
Design arguments // Other Minds
---- (1) Natural
---- ---- (a) Special
---- ---- (b) General
---- (2) Civil
---- ---- (a) Providential
---- ---- (b) Traditional
---- (3) Scriptural
Epistemological arguments // Knowledge
---- (1) Skepticism-breaking
---- (2) Error
---- (3) Illuminationist
Moral and Aesthetic arguments // Values
---- (1) Formal
---- (2) Final
---- (3) Coordinational
Anthropological arguments // Free Will
---- (1) Religious Experience
---- ---- (a) Personal
---- ---- (b) Testimonial
---- (2) Consensus Gentium
---- ---- (a) Summative
---- ---- (b) Natural
Pragmatic arguments
aspects of design (Derham): made with art, contrived with sagacity, ordered with design, ministering to ends
- Derham divides design for the Atmosphere into (a) Nature and Make and (b) consequent use to the world.
While the Kantian criticism that Physico-Theology confuses purpose and use often has bite and is sometimes devastating, it does not change the fact that, for reasons that they suggested, nature is a structure of usefulnesses and thus a functioning system composed of functioning systems. (This is why Kant takes it seriously as a *general* project.)
Derham considers the objection for animals & food that necessity makes the use -- that animals, hungry, just make use of what they can; he responds that the aptness of the food to the naimal is clearly part of the "very Constitution and Nature of Animals", so not chance, and that hte animals don't pick their food by accident or necessity but select it as "a proper Food, agreeable to their Constitution."
Derham on Animal Habitations:
Either (1) they have not only reason but also in a superior form (wisdom, foresight, discretion, art, and care);
or (2) they are passive, acting by instinct.
But surely not (1), therefore (2).
But the rationality of their actions must then be the reason of a superior being imprinted on their natures.
Derham: "signs of chance" -- botch, blunder, unnecessary apparatus
design arguments as arguments a fortiori
stability, beauty, scope, and subtlety as lures of inquiry
Philo on Gn 12:1-3: Land is symbol of body, kindred of sensation, father's house of speech. [De Migratione]
"It is evident that the parent must have knowledge of his offspring, the craftsman of the objects fashioned by him, the steward of the things managed by him. But God is truly the father and craftsman and steward of all things celestial and cosmic." Philo
Consciousness is necessarily a cooperation with the world.
"Materialism is...the attempt to explain what is directly given to us from what is given indirectly." Schopenhauer
Experience consists of many overlaps.
None of Tononi's arguments for the exclusion axiom of Integrated Information Theory seem adequate to the fuzziness of many experiences.
the cooperativeness of consciousness as one of the things meant by 'qualia'
Beliefs are had by way of a persona.
Most of our beliefs that things do not exist seem to be based on synousia rather than evidence. Nonexistence just fits better with other things we believe.
guesses as arising from doxastic synousia
lives of pleasure, triumph, and nobility
Memorizing poetry plays an important role in maintaining the health of a language -- even fragments are a considerable contribution, well constructed songs are even better; and a language whose speakers memorize extensive amounts of poetry is always thriving.
