the multiple realizability of Catholic Social Teaching
Mihaela Popa: In ironic metaphors, the irony presupposes the metaphorical, not the literal, meaning.
being present at a meeting at which one is not located
the state as super-capital
We should really limit 'executive authority' to the execution of law, distinguishing it from pre-executive or praeter-executive authority like pardon power, font of honors, commander in chief, which are often also veste din the office exercising executive authority.
(1) power of particular action
--- (a) special sovereign action (e.g., pardons, honors)
--- (b) execution of general action
--- (c) action of directive magistracy
(2) power of general action (laws and regulations)
(3) power of ceremonial personation
(4) specially vested ownership
moments/phases of problem of external world
(1) videtur: appearance
(2) an sit: causal requirement
(3) quid sit: nature
Without concepts of the good and the beautiful, no critique is possible. One can have variants on these, but one must have them in some form to have any critique at all.
Critique by its very nature implies normativity; the kind of normativity, and the way it implies it, constitute the kind of critique.
Modern money is a way for the state to create dependencies on the state.
Iconoclasm is always depersonalizing.
hieratic: baptism, confirmation, orders
medicinal: eucharist, penance, unction
both: matrimony
We have the concept of other because we first know ourselves as others.
Where Tolkien excels is in naming, and all Middle Earth grows out of that.
What we usually call liberalism tends to go wrong by privileging means of freedom over the ends that actually make us free.
The most important ways to resist usurpations of power successfully, in most situations, involve mutual support, solidarity, and common sense -- nothing flashy, certainly, but we still know of nothing more generally effective.
a politics of small things done well
What can be known a priori or a posteriori obviously depends on the account of knowledge; what is analytic or synthetic depends on the classification being used; and what is necessary or contingent depends on the universe of discourse.
Nothing could deter unless it were first intelligible as retributive. We do not change our behavior for unrelated bad happenings.
Every argument against the death penalty has a counterpart argument against euthanasia, although the reverse is not true. (The reason for the disparity is that life is a more intimate concern of medicine than of law.)
manifestness, straightness, firmness, faithfulness
evidentness, rightness, steadfastness, trustworthiness
meaningfulness and manifestation
presence and revelation
availability and disclosure
there and through
Communism is essentially based on an analogy: that as the burghers did with the lords, so the laborers will do with the burghers.
Capitalism by its nature is structured to subordinate the rural to the urban, the local to the global, the natural to the artificial without regard to good or bad, and thus in both good and bad ways.
By its presence in the world, the Church reflects as in a mirror the Godwardness of both the world and the human beings around it.
In a sacrament, which exists in the context of the Church and concerns the sanctity of those who partake, a sanctity that is of and from Christ, we are related to Christ by the sacrament's relation to Christ; in each of the seven sacraments, by serving as a means to indicate such an end, the sacrament serves as a means to accomplish that end.
Liberty requires an infrastructure.
occasional, eclectic, and systematic almsgiving (there is need for all three)
Most arguments for credences and the like are really about the actionableness of belief rather than belief itself.
People regularly confuse 'matching of subjective probability with objective probability' and 'taking objective probabilities as they are'.
Every transfer of rights presupposes shared rights.
The medieval traditio instrumentorum seems to be based on an analogy between ordination and contracts involving transfer. Think about this.
Practical politics is to political philosophy as cartoons to treatises; but we must not forget that the latter do not replace the value of the former.
core values of civil service: impartiality, honesty, integrity
- principle of selection on merit through fair and open competition
creation, covenant, Christ, Church
'being in the clear' as a more fundamental concept than any specific right
Note that in Mk 1:8, John the Baptist explicitly makes Christ the principal agent of baptism (he himself will baptize you).
When Mark says 'immediately', he means 'directly connected with that'. When he says 'in those days', it is a storyteller's expression; even today when a storyteller says 'in those days', it is not for chronological rendering but to set up a narrative frame.
Mk 2:2 "he was speaking the logos to them"
Rights bring the world within our ambit.
All arguments for requiring violations of the seal of the confessional are arguments for using ethically and procedurally inadmissible evidence, and they all fail for the same reason the latter do.
legal evidence
(1) real: actual object directly involved in event in the case
(2) demonstrative: illustration or pictorial representation (e.g., map of crime scene, medical diagram)
(3) documentary: linguistic representation
(4) anecdotal: evidence taken from witnesses
hypercumulation of small, local improvements as an imitation of genius
Experimentation is a luxury dependent on availability of resources (including time and labor).
"The formulation of any physical theory has always been preceded by a series of retouchings which from almost formless first sketches have gradually led the system to more finished states." Duhem
Van Bendegem (1992): The determination of Newtonian models depends on four finitist assumptions -- no infinite forces, no infinite masses, no infinite accelerations, no infinite velocities. If only singularities threaten determinism, these four suffice to rule out singularities in the only two cases, collisions and near-collisions, that could introduce them into the Newtonian cases. (Thi sis not true of general relativity, but analogous principles do similar work in special relativity and electrodynamics.)
pramanas as causal channels (ways we are caused to be right)
Issues and problems are constituted within philosophers.
It is an error to think that there is any society in which scientific research or intellectual study would be wholly free from any possibility of censure.
the fromness of perception and the toness of attention within perception
Phenomenology is a pursuit of invariances.
Love by its very nature creates sacred precincts.
rights from gift vs rights from extrinsic denomination
posse comitatus, hue and cry, shopkeeper's privilege, citizen's arrest
Evidence is a particular kind of causal connection to what is actual.
"True civility speaks not merely about limits but about a vision of the civitas." Richard John Neuhaus
familiarity : good taste :: knowledge : wisdom
Three reasons logical laws cannot be reduced to ways the mind works (Husserl):
(1) Logical laws are too precise.
(2) Logical laws can be known a priori.
(3) Logical laws are not structured as if they have psychological referents.
philosophy workshop → philosophy showcase → philosophy museum
transmodal analogy
"To what alternate *meanness* and *rashness* do the passions lead, when reason and self-denial do not oppose them!" Burney, Evelina
Insititutions built only on utility will not last, because each generation thinks it can achieve what the previous generation could not, and shifts its standards of utility to convince itself that this is so.
In political matters, example speaks more loudly than guidelines; the norms and expectations are precedential.
Regulations do not operate alone but within a system of regulations and norms.
All legislation depends on assumptions about right and wrong.
rights as claims on the sovereign
condign vs congruous claims
a common two-step: arguing for a liberal regime on deontological grounds, structuring the regime on purely consequentialist grounds
Hume's account of constancy raises the problem that we might never be able to know when an idea is simple.
States create the classes and groupings that maintain their power.
"Originality may perhaps be defined the power of abstracting for oneself, and is in thought what strength of mind is in action." Newman
It is a mistake to confuse tradition with things that have been around a long time; tradition must be handed down, and is intrinsically opposed to preservation by mere inertia or from lack of an alternative.
Human concepts apply to things of which they are concepts not all in the same way, but in varying degrees. For instance, Confucius and a bumbling tutor are both teachers, but Confucius is more perfectly a teacher; the concept 'teacher' is a more perfect fit to him than to the bumbling tutor.
"As literal madness is derangement of reason, so sin is derangement of the heart, of the spirit, of the affection." Newman
Every argument can be translated into a challenge to disprove at least one premise.
the Parable of the Sower as a parable about parables
Large regions of medical ethics collapse if there is no distinction of moral significance between doing and allowing.
