"Every classification has reference to a tendency toward an end. If this tendency is the tendency which has determined the class characters of the objects, it is a natural classification." C. S. Peirce
"Every unitary classification has a leading idea or purpose, and is a natural classification in so far as that same purpose is determinative in the production of the objects classified."
Peirce on the 'longitude' of final causes: "By this I mean that while a certain ideal end state of things might most perfectly satisfy a desire, yet a situation somewhat different from that will be far better than nothing; and in general, when a state is not too far from teh ideal state, the nearer it approaches that state the better." (CP 1.207)
typological classification and the longitude of final causes
cp. "clustering distributions will characterize purposive classes" (Peirce, CP 1.207).
"the fact that classes merge is no proof that they are not truly distinct classes" Peirce
Dave Oswald Mitchell on protest organizing
(1) Put target in a decision dilemma.
(2) Do the media's work for them (give them the story).
(3) Lead with sympathetic characters.
"Unjust and unlawful is any monopoly, educational and scholastic, which, physically or morally, forces families to make use of government schools contrary to the dictates of their Christian conscience." Pius XI
When we say that something works in a lawlike fashion, we mean that it does so as if its possibilities were constrained and weighted so as to select a result; that is final causation.
Roberts (2008): While theories may draw on laws, the function of being a law is not part of a scientific theory.
pseudonymous persona and quasi-property
"Not everyone who imagines something is also aware and judges that he has imagined." Avicenna
Steinkrüger (2015): Aristotle's logic is a relevance logic in the sense that (a) premises and conclusion must in some way share content and (b) premises must be used to derive the conclusion.
God as the truthmaker for 'Good is to be done and sought, and bad avoided'
natural a priori (mind prior to any experience), structural a priori (mind in making sense of experience to begin with), conceptual a priori (mind drawing on experience and going beyond it)
sensory a posteriori, memorial or memorative a posteriori, introspective a posteriori
Everybody accepts some philosophical claims on testimony.
felt alienness accounts of the external world
(perhaps more general as felt alterity, with alienness as an extreme form)
Because of the way utilitarianism is structured, utilitarianism tends toward catastrophe-mining.
Philosophical rhetoric studies possible means of persuasion -- the 'possible' is important.
Whewellian superinduction of concepts and the synthetic a priori
"We have a human need to pray in a way that overwhelms our senses, and the human need to have that experience interpreted to us so that it becomes even richer and fuller and more significant, because worship is not an individual act but a communal event." Cat Hodge
Ganeri (2003): Nyaya logic as case-based reasoning
"Even plants have things done to them that are harmful or beneficial, and what does them good must be related in some way to their living and dying." Philippa Foot
Goldman's account of sexual desire in "Plain Sex" ("desire for contact with another person's body and for the pleasure which such contact produces") massively oversexualizes the desire for bodily contact and fails to recognize the distinctness of it from the desire to give pleasure and similar desires.
What we usually call political parties are not parties as such but organizational shells for them.
A philosophical system is a unified interpretation of arguments.
Some subarguments are within the universe of the main argument (direct reasons for premises); others are in a universe modally related (reductio & hypothetical 'suppose x' arguments generally).
The spirit of moral laws is not confined to some purely interior disposition but is a matter of the disposition of one's whole life.
"No man can possibly be righteous without having the hope, from the analogy of the physical world, that righteousness must have its reward." Kant
The very idea of making suggests the question of whether the world is made and what, if it is, makes it.
Spatial metaphors typically capture modal information.
"All men are certain that there is an external world: and yet they have not this certainty from their consciousness, for consciousness is limited to phenomena purely internal; nor do they know the fact by evidence, because, even supposing the possibility of a true demonstration, many would be incpaable of comprehending it, and because the majority have never thought, and never will think, of such demonstrations." Balmes
Balmes's common sense is a sense of the extravagantness of a possibility; by it we recognize that some possibilities, despite being possibilities, are too extravagant to be true, that something seems too unlikely to be taken seriously. This is fallible, he thinks, unless four features are found in it:
(1) the impulse is irresistible
(2) it is plausible to treat it as common to the whole human race
(3) it endures tests of reason
(4) it bears on the satisfaction of some fundamental need of all human life.
four kinds of impossibility (Balmes)
(1) metaphysical: implies contradiction
(2) physical: violates law of nature
(3) ordinary/moral: violates ordinary course of things
(4) of common sense: too improbable by its very nature ever to be verified
"In reading, there are two essentials: to select good books, and to read them well." Balmes
"It is only when perception fails us that we have to ask the question whether a thing is so or not." Aristotle
"Love, recognizing germs of loveliness in the hateful, gradually warms it into life, and makes it lovely." Peirce
Law does not govern external action only; it also gives people a guideline to keep in mind in relating to others.
moral regards: self-reflective, cooperative, abstract, regulative
each idea a silkworm for the magnaneries of reason
Representations are activations.
The brain is an organ of sensory representation.
Whether logical truths exclude possibilities depends on the specific modalities being considered.
(1) paradigmatics
(2) formal model construction
(3) history of philosophy
(4) evidential analysis
(5) socratics
Jurisprudence does not ignore internal disposition; its means of taking it into account are limited, but they are important. (Consider, for instance, the roles of 'malice', 'insanity', 'sincerity', 'mental anguish', and the like.)
term contradiction
syllogistic reduction as a practice for students on the way to doing proofs fully
Martin (1993): "To fathom the nature of etiquette, one must realize that etiquette plays at least three distinct, conceptually separable social functions: a regulative, a symbolic, and a ritual function."
-- law cannot be justly administered without etiquette
-- "In its symbolic function, etiquette provides a system of symbols whose semantic content provides for predictability in social relations, especially among strangers."
(1) There are no degrees of belief, properly speaking.
(2) The language usually used to suggest there are does not, and could not, support degrees of belief being real-valued.
(3) There is no reason to think that degrees of belief would have to correspond to odds for betting on propositions.
'Popular antiquities' should have been kept as a subgenus of 'folklore'.
'personal brand' as quasi-property
person ) persona ) personal brand (persona instrumentality)
natural religion as seal of ethics
Liguori on baptism of desire: Moral Theology Bk 6 nn 95-97
-- note that he takes it to be de fide (Council of Trent session 6, chapter 4: 'sine lavacro regenerationis aut ejus voto')
fluminis, flaminis, sanguinis
grace as that whereby we imitate God and converse with him.
"A benevolent judge is unthinkable." (Kant)
-- a great deal about Kant in this one sentence
Democracy obscures the courses of power by allowing power to be exercised anonymously through intermediary networks built for that purpose; thus with it, one always has to consider the behind-scenes.
If 'best scientific view' includes our best scientific accounts of all major domains, our best scientific view is at any given moment incoherent.
reason's title to inquire
Even the most prudent people require advice, and even at times clarification of principles and moral concepts, or morally relevant concepts, that another can more easily provide.
freedom as "that faculty which gives unlimited usefulness to all other faculties" (Kant)
the duty of ordering one's life so as to be fit for the performance of moral duties
consciousness of one's life as a trust
moral luck // intellectual luck
We use metaphors not only to get people to notice things, but also to get them not to notice things, i.e., to obscure things. One can perhaps treat the latter as sleight-of-indication, misdirecton taht is trying to get people to notice something else, but these are also not exhaustive, and also shared with literal discourse.
mathematical insulation: there is no way to unite all of math into a single system without insulating some parts from some other parts
Rigor is a relation of means to end.
"All nations begin with theology and are founded by theology." Maistre
"The beautiful, in all imaginable genres, is that which pleases enlightened virtue. Any other definition is false or insufficient." Maistre
Secularization proceeds by active resource denial on one side and active retreat on the other.
NB Xiong's argument that we assume external objects because we become accustomed to relying on things for nourishment.
genuine liberal Christianity vs. neochristianity
a mind rich with folds
While Wittgenstein talks about 'hinge' propositions, it would perhaps be more reasonable to talk of envelope propositions.
subject, world, and God as postulates of philosophical inquiry
The notion of cause is at the heart of our notion of the world; without causes there is no world.
"Observation and experience show that a worthless man values his life more than his person." Kant
philosophical problems as loci for debates
Evidence-collection is structured by choices.
the rights of refuge of victims of wreck (shipwreck, plane crashes, storms and other catastrophes forcing to shelter) vs the rights of refuge of people in flight
