This completes the notebook finished in April 2019, and starts the next notebook.
creation myths as metaphors for discovery and for artistic invention, different myths capturing different aspects
the whole sacramental economy as an image of heaven and future glory
warrants as ways of documenting the apparent connection between police action and common good
enlightening
-- primarily (formal & final): baptism
-- secondarily (formal): penance
-- secondarily (final): unction
perfecting
-- formal: confirmation
-- final: eucharist
luck as coincidence suggestive of final cause
inculturation as cleansing, enlightening, and perfecting
participatio vs. quaedam participatio: Sent 1d36q2a3arg4
quaedam participatio as *grant* of imitation
"That a religion may be true, it must have knowledge of our nature. It ought to know its greatness and littleness, and the reason of both." Pascal
hyperpublic, public, semipublic, and private evidential contexts
self-signification (part signifying whole, whole signifying part, self-presentation in signifying context, manifestation)
Mutual aid requires self-restraint in habit and in customary practice.
Toil expands to occupy the time
When people say, 'machine learning', substitute 'statistics'.
Pascal's primary concern in his discussions of perpetuity is the election of Israel.
"Ce dieu touche les coeurs lorsque moins on y pense." Corneille
hope as counter-habit, a kind of freedom for the new (Péguy)
the splash of hope
Progress is made by the separation of chaff and wheat; but it is not as if this were endless refinement -- every harvest, there is chaff and wheat.
Christ does not only fulfill the prophecies, He gives to the prophecies a new future.
the Annunciation as the perfection of prophecy, the prophecy that already begins its realization (Péguy)
It is a dangerous temptation for academics to confuse the progress of learning with the progress of their careers.
The Kesh Temple Hymn identifies as components of religion: heroes, a consecrated house or shrine, sacrifices, priests, temple & priestly implements (stone bowls, staves, instruments [drum, horn]), recitation.
Shuruppak:
"You should not speak improperly; later it will lay a trap for you."
"Heaven is far, earth is most precious, but it is with heaven that you multiply your goods, and all foreign lands breathe under it."
"Prayer is cool water that cools the heart."
"You should not serve things; things should serve you."
"The shepherd who stopped searching stopped bringing back the sheep."
sacral Israel as type of the Catholic Church
appropriated doctrine vs private opinion
filial piety toward the Apostles
You are free to the extent that nothing constrains you except common good.
(1) prudence over self
(2) prudence with respect to others
-- (a) by example
-- (b) by rule
-- (c) by advice
American Buddhism is primarily a translation of Enlightenment rationalism, Romantic idealism, and liberal Protestantism into a Buddhist vocabulary (McMahan, The Making of Buddhist Modernism).
Xici: the I Ching as a learning tool for prudent reflection in light of change
baptism : citizenry :: confirmation : militia
"Prudence and justice are virtues and excellences of all times and of all places; we are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance." Johnson
"Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason."
"What affirmation and negation are in thinking, pursuit and avoidance are in desire." Aristotle
"It is not absolution only which remits sin by the sacrament of penance, but contrition, which is not real if it does not seek the sacrament." Pascal
The notion of cause is part of our notion of the self.
The Matrix shifted the primary action-movie centerpiece from the chase to the fight.
the effect of one sacrament through another (ex consequentis)
coherence and the worldness of the world
External World
Part I: A History
-- Cartesian
-- Berkeleyan
-- Humean
-- Shepherdian
Part II: An Argument
-- Act/potency
-- Causation
-- 3 Properties
Part III: Expansions
-- Abstract Objects
-- Moral realism
-- Aesthetic realism
-- God
"It is the nature of power, always to press upon the boundaries which confine it." Paley
the essential features of standard logical assumption
(1) self-giving: Assuming A, you can conclude A.
(2) weakening: What is assumed may be ignored if not needed.
(3) bang: What is assumed can repeatedly be assumed.
(4) nonattachment: Assumptions do not change logical features if the order of assumptions is changed.
-- it's interesting to ask what happens if you drop each
Suarez on the signs of heresy
(1) origin infused by
-- (a) pride (Aug. De Pastor. ch. 8)
-- (b) envy (Chrys. hom 7 in Rom.)
-- (c) other vices (2 Tim 3:2ff)
(2) discord and separation from Rome (Cyprian, Aug)
(3) inconstancy and division of doctrine (Basil on Is 5)
(4) mutilation of the Word of God in its use (Vincent of Lerins, Basil; Ath. contra Arian. or. 1& 2)
(5) despising the Catholic Church (Vincent of Lerins; Aug, De unit. eccl.)
(6) refusal to acquiesce in the Councils (Ath. Contra Arian. 1)
(7) despising the authority of the Fathers (Aug. Contra Litter. bk 2 ch 61)
(8) being led by one's own spirit/arbitrating a religion for oneself (Hilary, De Trin Bk 1)
(9) colored eloquence that is precipitate and unrestrained (Naz or. 33; Gregory in Job Bk 7.2)
(10) novelty contrary to ancient doctrine (Chrys. hom 47 in Matt)
(11) loss of Catholic name and new denomination
(12) futile and earthly behavior
love, joy, and peace as paradisial acts
vices not consisting in any mean
vices consisting in what is only a mean with respect to something other than reason
vices consisting in a mean only according to imprudent reason
"Some hold that in the place of bliss, God is visible in His brightness but not in His nature. This is to indulge in overmuch subtlety. For in that simple and unchangeable essence, no division can be made between the nature and the brightness." Gregory, Moralia in Iob 18.90
We do not merely want good; we want good as contributing to a totality of good.
People misread the hypocrisy of their opponents as confirmation of their own sincerity.
Every mortal sin is
(a) a turning away from immutable good
(b) toward mutable good
(c) in violation of reason.
the human tradition
- the core part is received human nature itself
- this is integrated with received human society (being part of the human race)
Kant reduces all virtue to fortitude; Bentham cuts temperance out from the virtues.
the discernibility of symmetry as an aesthetic fact
As Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the teaching of the Church should partake of these, through accessibility, definiteness, and practicality.
evidence that a position is consistent, that it is true, that it is good, that it is beautiful
The perpetual challenge of tax law is that it must be done on the assumption that everyone is poor at mathematics, because with respect to taxes this is practically true.
eleos (mercy); elaion (oil)
human dignity // dignity of marriage
As a complete society, the Church has full moral and social powers of press, school, market, militia, and hospital, insofar as these are suitable for its supernatural end.
'But Knowledge is as food, and needs no less
Her Temperance over Appetite, to know
In measure what the mind may well contain.' (Milton)
"...since what orders the cosmos is double, we speak of one aspect of it as the Demiurge, and the other as the soul of the universe, and when we talk of Zeus, we are sometimes referring to the Demiurge and sometimes to the controlling principle of the universe." Plotinus (Enn 4.4.10)
On Plotinus's account of prayer, it is as it were pre-answered; that to which one prays is not responding to the prayer but acting according to its nature, ever sending forth emanations, and in prayer on harmonizes with these.
the consequentialist character of Eve's temptation in Milton: "Fair to the eye, inviting to the Taste /Of virtue to make wise".
-- Note that Satan in PL anticipates a sort of argument from evil: God would not be just if he punished you for doing what makes you happier.
In Paradise Lost, both Satan and fallen Eve assume that inferiority is inconsistent with freedom.
To distinguish coming into being from coming from elsewhere requires that the former be seen as causal. (Anscombe)
They are distinguishable *as effects*.
final causes as the root of the distinction between projectable and nonprojectable predicates
three types of public philosophy (Eugene Heath)
(1) situated in a public setting
(2) modified for varied public (public audience)
(3) functions as normative consensus (public expression)
-- Heath takes (2) to be the key one.
-- He notes that the classroom itself is a venue for public philosophy.
Nothing is so conducive to self-deception as ingratitude.
the family as first hospice/clinic, first school, first market, first church
"Every reform, however necessary, will be weak minds be carried to an excess, which will itself need reforming." Coleridge
"Every man that is not absolved by the water of regeneration, is tied and bound by the guilt of the original bond. But that which the water of Baptism avails for with us, this either faith alone did of old in behalf of infants, or, for those of riper years, the virtue of sacrifice, or, for all that came of the stock of Abraham, the mystery of circumcision." (Gregory Moralia 4.3 pref)
In architecture, sometimes the good we do extends far beyond any memory that may remain of us.
the impossibility of an error theory about the existence of error
the impossibility of fictionalism about the existence of fictions
'Some possible claims are false' is a necessary proposition.
as-if intentionality → causal tendency → causal capability
"To move one's body is to aim at things through it." Merleau-Ponty
tradition as a resistance to propaganda
Heretics "are loath to have a common sort of knowledge, lest they should be placed on a part with the rest of their fellow-creatures, and they are ever making out new things, which, whilst others known nothing of it, they plume their own selves on the preeminence of their knowledge before inexperienced minds." Gregory (Moralia 5.45)
Without intentionality there could be no -ism in eliminativism about intentionality.
-isms as intentional structures
Eliminativism in general is the deliberate elimination of some intentional element belonging to an intentional structure.
The notion of an equation does not occur as a solution in the equations of physics, and yet those equations are proof of the existence of equations. And so it is with many other things that have to do with the mind. The theories of physics exemplify things about the universe that they do not describe.
Values are intrinsic to the notion of a theoretical model, and are what we consider when considering the quality of the model.
'knowledge production' vs cultivation of the conditions for knowing
Most forms of naturalism that include the reduction of all sciences to physics make the universe a concretely existing mathematical object.
the platonism of one lonely Idea
illumination from within by aspiration, instruction from without by doctrine and sign
Reason is intrinsically aspiring.
Penance deals specifically with actual sin; but unction concerns not just actual sin but also things merely associated with sin. (When penance gives grace against these things, it does so *as anticipating unction*, just as when unction gives grace to remit actual sin it does so derivatively from penance.) [ex conseqentis effects of sacraments]
the Church as family (household), as militia, as hierarchy of grace
Contemporary modernity is a resistance to hierarchy. Nonetheless people are fascinated by hierarchies of angels, by stories about courts, by the impressiveness (for good or for evil) of a military.
quando accidents, mutable substance
Promises are part of the natural expression of love; lovers promise, friends promise, people promise on behalf of or for the sake of what they love, Love Himself makes covenants.
