Friday, July 31, 2020

Dashed Off XVII

kinds of resources
- working stock: now being extracted
- reserve stock: extractable with minor adjustment
- resource stock: known but extractable only with major adjustment
- hidden stock: suspected/estimated but not known
- surprise stock: unknown and unsuspected

The only value of schooling as such is learning how to make things, whether they are discourses, experiments, mathematical models, or machines, or anything else.

finance-for vs finance as that which tends toward the limit of endless revenue for no work
the two corruptions of trade: that which tends toward endless return for no work, that which tends toward endless work for no return

normal fluctuation inequalities
persistent inequalities
compounding inequalities

Tools are generally constituted in the context of traditions; one sees this in the case of explorers dying in environments in which natives thrive.

Tradition by nature is a kind of living with others.

As a kind of living with others, tradition is for the sake of others.

Tradition possesses what it receives as an anticipatory possession, that is, as a receiving so as to give.

silence as a mode of magisterial teaching

The 'ontology' of common sense is constructed as one goes, although it is constrained by precedent.

Mk 5:7 -- the practice of evil in trying to get good to bind itself against acting with authority against evil

rabbi = didaskalos (Mk 5:35)

When we have a concept like 'infinite wisdom', this is not a conjunction of 'infinite' and 'wisdom' but a modification of 'wisdom' so that it will be take as infinite; the 'infinite' part indicates something that is as it were higher-order.

Moral obligations are characterized by what can be done to fulfill them.

A lot of what goes by names like 'one's political position' is a political aesthetic, with the actual politics being substantially 'might makes right'; people pick out the flavors they prefer aggressive power to have.

"The only hope of attaining amity lies, not in ignoring boundaries, but, on the contrary, in respecting them." Chesterton

ascetic practices as fonts of freedom

"Every badge of power is not immediately beneficial, but it is certainly helpful if it is carried well; and it is well carried when it benefits the subjects over whom the worldly honors are placed." Isidore
"Rulers easily either edify or subvert the life of their subjects by their own behavior, and therefore it is not right that a ruler should sin, lest by the unpunished license of his sin he establish a pattern of sinning." (cp. Confucianism)

Every form of autonomy presupposes a form of authority.

All human authority is situated; social location influences our experience and development, giving a shape to our minds and character so that authority arises from a particular location. Of these locations, some give a superior authority, namely those capable of communicating power, wisdom, or goodness, such as an office of command, or old age, or martyrdom for the good and true.

When most people are criticizing 'capitalism', it is often clear that they are criticizing oligarchy. Defenses of capitalism are sometimes defenses of capital-based economic structures and sometimes praises of democracy.

'provoking men to repentance by their preaching' (Mk 6:12)

Mk 6:1-6 shows a parallel to the state of things in a modern secularized society: overfamiliarity with the superficial leads the cultural hometown/household of Christ, people who should know Him, to have no faith in the carpenter. And thus the Church has no great works, except at times some healings and the like.
-- How does Jesus respond? He expands His ministry to form a circuity (Mk 6:6) -- notice that he does not merely expand but expands and keeps returning in order to consolidate. And he seds missionaries forth (Mk 6:7) on special missions.

A general council has both formal authority (being the most complete form of the teaching mission of bishops) and representative authority (thus carrying common consent as well as mission).

Both Pope and general council have both formal authority and representative authority, but the Pope most clearly represents formal authority and the Council most clearly expresses representative authority; thus the general council confirmed by the Pope is the most manifest expression of the authority of the Church.

The Pope can participate in a council by legate, but can only confirm a council himself.

diligence : magnanimity :: continence : temperance

complete justice in supreme governance
the common good united to the highest good

A just regime requires (1) virtue, or at least decency, in the people, (2) forgiveness of sins and correctness of them, and (3) the assistance of divine providence.

Hope prays rather than presumes.

A question to ask for each philosophical problem: What general features of language are required for formulating the problem to be possible at all?

Mk 7:24-30 as type of vicarious intention in infant baptism (see Bede)

modes of potentiality
(1) composition
(2) incompleteness
(3) limitation
(4) change
(5) division
-- each of these has a corresponding actuality
-- from each of tehse there is a possible argument to pure act

If reason could only work on distinct ideas, it would never begin

status inequality between academics and non-academics, imposed by the former

a quasi-Liebnizian conjecture: All determinisms rule out infinites.

Merleau-Ponty: the living body is already intentional in character

Jn 1:18
Sinaiticus: only begotten God in the bosom of the Father
Byzantine: only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father
Jn 3:8
Sinaiticus: of water and of the Spirit
Byzantine: of the Spirit
Jn 6:69
Sin: the Holy One of God
Byz: the Christ, the Son of the living God
Jn 7:8
Sin: not going
Byz: not yet going
Lk 8:40
Sin: looking for God
Byz: looking for Jesus
Mk 7:4
Sin: pourings
Byz: immersions
Mt 28:17
Sin: they worshiped
Byz: they worshiped Him

On Jn 1:18
only begotten Son: Hippolytus, Hilary (de Trin), Ambrose, Augustine (Tract in Io), Chrysostom (Hom 15), Athanasius
only begotten God: Basil (De spir), Epiphanius, Cyril of Alexandria (Comm in Io), Gregory of Nyssa, Peshitta, Origien (Commo in Io)
- NB Irenaeus seems to use both 'only begotten God' (Adv Haer 4:11) and 'only begotten Son' (Adv Haer 4:6, 3:5-6_. Clement of Alexandria may have both as well: Strom 5:12 quotes 'only begotten God', but Rich Man 37 and Strom 1:26 seem clearly to allude to 'only begotten Son'.
- Ephrem in his commentary seems to suggest his ms. only had 'only begotten', which seems confirmed by Aphrahat (Dem 6).

The role of people in science and the like whom we are likely to identify as the discoverers are in general the people who gave the idea a form such that it could become common wisdom, often reorganizing loose speculations and scattered evidence into something substantial, or finding the way to make something's significance clear.

'Autoethnography' originally referred to the expressed self-understanding of the informants, not the ethnographers themselves, to recognize that some of the ethnographical work was in fact already done by the people themselves, independent of the ethnographer.

Darwin concludes that he should perhaps have used 'natural preservation' rather than 'natural selection' (letter to Lyell, 28 Sept 1860).

"It is the very function of the Christian to be moving against the world, and to be protesting against the majority of voices." Newman

the characteristic graces of different saints

Traditions need to be refreshed according to times and places.

names said of God
-- negatively
-- affirmatively
-- -- relatively
-- -- simply
-- -- -- properly
-- -- -- metaphorically

The intellectual given is given by the agent intellect.

All of beauty is a sort of tradition from God (cp S. Thomas In IV DDN, lectio 5).

Most of the time when we assign probabilities in evidential reasoning, it is based on our *prior* recognition of them as evidence.

metaphors for sin, each capturing a different aspect
(1) weight (burden)
(2) debt
(3) illness
-- there needs to be more work done on the relationships here

Between natural religion, properly speaking, and revealed religion is customary religion.

Scripture guides the Church, but the sacraments build it.

Church as (Christological) mystery → Church as institution → Church as congregation → Church as (eschatological) mystery

the Eucharist as priestly (hence the need to be baptized)
the Eucharist as royal (hence the need to be shriven)
the Eucharist as prophetic (hence the need to approach in truth and charity)

Christianity, bringing a higher life, brings a higher juridicality.

sacramental penance and penance of desire (cp. Quodl IV.7.1, SCG IV.72.13, ST III.86.6ad3, In IV Sent d17a3q1a2ad1)

The sacrament confession requires a connection to the Apostles, and especially Peter, who were given the keys.

Note that the exorcism of Mk 9:14-29 is (1) sandwiched between Jesus's discussions of his death and resurrection, and (2) put in terms of reminiscent of death and resurrection (he falls like a corpse, Jesus raises him up).

"Honor means a sort of testimony of someone's excellence." Aquinas ST 2-2.103.1

Without the four cardinal virtues, there can be very little progress.

Every body is many distinguishable quantitative structures.

Hume's galley effect implies that the external world would have the appearance of a teleology, however minimal: what we seens seems to have a tendency to what we do not sense.

Almost all business affairs involve some form of begging, whether for attention, or time, or the like, for the purpose of receiving money.

"'Body' expresses a being in so far as it carries out in us an action having a given mode." Rosmini

Constancy and coherence are not merely features of the world as perceived but also of the world as inferred.

Heidegger explicitly links 'thrownness' to 'that it is' (B&T I.5, H135), which is no doubt why Edith Stein links it to creatureliness.