This ends the notebook that was completed February 2020.
"No truth stands by itself -- as each is kept in order and harmonized by other truths." Newman
People often do not seem to understand how often they offend others, the offense merely being endured until a new situation overrides it, or else quietly being forgiven.
artifical vs natural models // artificial vs natural classifications
Debunking arguments often make the mistake of treating as non-truth-tracking things that are truth-taking in a limited way or under certain conditions (e.g., self-interest, social stability, empathy, etc.).
-- And of course this is in great measure the sleight of hand one often finds -- imperfections in the process are treated as reasons to rule the process out entirely. The defective is treated as the useless, the fragile as the broken, the sometimes irrelevant as the simply irrelevant.
Apostles are guided by inspiratio, i.e., by a positive gift and charism, and adsistentia, i.e. by negative restraint in the office; popes, as such, receive an office connected to the latter, and thus are guided only by adsistentia in it.
three standards: craftsmanship, product specification, product goals
Historical events, like physical events, are measured by containments and cycles.
Human beings cannot be satisfied, or even patient, very long with mere repetition; they must see it as something having meaning in a broader story, however good in itself.
People with no sense of the consecrated are horrified at nothing.
heart-warming as appealing to 'warm' virtues, or at least our capacity for them -- sympathy, joy, love
-- heart-warming and comfort
-- heart-warming and human connection
four forms of fraternity: natura, gente, cognatione, affectu (sibling, compatriot, kin, friend)
the works of philosophers as rough drafts or preliminary sketches of wisdom
Reduction to Box (exceptionlessness) repeatedly and spontaneously arises as in accounts of how explanation works, for many different modalities.
the sublimity of God in the cradle, the sublimity of God on the Cross
(love of Christ → love of those in whom Christ dwells [love of the brethren]) → love of those in whom Christ can dwell [love of humanity]
mutual esteem, reciprocal concessions, and reasonable dealings
Human beings are teachers by virtue of being human.
the piacular as more fundamental than the culpable
States and governments tend to use divisions in the citizenry as an occasion for developing state-dependence in the citizenry.
The original root idea of aion (as well as aevum) seems to have been something like 'lifespan', which then gets used in extended meanings (generation) and in figurative and semi-figurative meanings (the lifespan of the world, an age or eon or epoch).
The Romans took the god Aion to have Aeternitas as his female counterpart; both were the guarantors of perpetual Roman dominion.
The Kingdom having no end (Lk 1:33), it is everlasting, aionion (2 Pt 1:11).
2 Cor 4:18 aionios vs proskairos
Timaeus: aionios as that of which time is the moving image
aye, aevum, aion
"the completness which embraces the time of the life of each, outside of which there is nothing, according to nature, is called the aion of each. For the same reason, the completeness of the whole heaven, and the completeness embracing all time and infinitude is aion, having received this name from existing for ever, immortal and divine." Aristotle
"In aion, nothing is passed, nothing is about to be, but only subsists." Philo (De Mundo 7)
A patron saint qua patron is a symbolic altar for prayer.
equations as expanded zeroes
etiquette & the cultivation of the appearance of cooperation in order to facilitate substantive cooperation
coziness
-- generally taken to be related to hospitableness (Exceptions are mostly obviously ironic)
-- suggests smallness -- roomy but cozy is not impossible but is oxymoronic and in need of explanation
-- coziness often goes with warmness
spookiness and creepiness as species of uncanniness
"Our minds make stories, and stories make our minds." Terry Pratchett
An enthymeme is reasoning from the thymos.
Despite the name, a hypothesis test in statistics is not really a test of the hypothesis but a method for proceeding to an acceptable solution in decision problems in which the false positive rate is centrally important and potentially costly.
the portability of religious practice (the history of Judaism shows that this can play a significant role in how a religion develops and adapts)
Space and time are two ways of measuring causal possibility.
Even the appearance of mobbing is absolutely antithetical to the professional ethics of academic philosophy.
numeracy and literacy as more like physical fitness than specific skill, a state of preparedness arising from a habit of practicing
-- integrity is perhaps like this in moral life
corporations as human self-instrumentations
compression, communication, and new-inquiry-making as marks of understanding
All reasoning starts from something deemed worthy of unfolding.
Scientific claims are often less conclusions than patterns of inquiry.
Disjunction introduction (Addition) makes disjunction into an also-in-the-universe-of-discourse operator.
Torah as "the message declared by angels" (Hb 2:2; cp Acts 7:38-39, 53; Gal 3:19; and Josephus Ant. 15.5.3)
Every ethos is mediated.
morality in root, morality in mediation, morality in reception
In ancestor Christology and angel Christology, one attributes a causal role (mediation) to Christ, but with remotion and eminence: Christ is the Angel whose mediation is higher than the angels, the Ancestor whose mediation is higher than the ancestors, the superangelic Angel, the superancestral Ancestor.
arguments against the view that St. Joseph was sanctified in the womb or sinless
(1) the doctrine is not found in Scripture, either by prophecy, or by explicit statement, or by figure
(2) attributions to Joseph, like those to Mary, must arise out of his role in the work of salvation. Joseph's role is not to be blessed, full of grace, or overshadowed by the Spirit, his flesh does not need to be prepared to be that from which the Word Incarnate comes; he has no extensive prophetic role. His role is to be, like the patriarchs, a righteous man, to betroth and to serve as protector. Thus is it is reasonable to consider him Protector of the Universal Church; this arises out of his role. But sanctification in the womb does not, and sinlessness especially does not.
officia and professional ethics
In argument as in swordsmanship, hasty strokes go oft astray.
autonomy or autarchy of reason // integrity of body
doublings in Genesis as emphasis of theme
Doublings in Genesis are too common not to be deliberate.
One of the important features of George Herbert's poetic approach is that the title is not just the name of the poem but also part of the poem.
It would be more accurate to say that our natality gives the events of our life meaning than to say that our mortality does; and more accurate still to say that it is our eternity that does so.
Trying always to be right leads inevitably to dishonesty.
Confirmation depends on what exists.
'Allies' is what you are in the face of designated enemies.
three elements of full ownership
(1) usus (right to use as is)
(2) fructus (right to profit from)
(3) abusus (right to alienate either by consumption or transfer)
'Theories of truth' are in general just theories of marks of truth.
Differences in possible punishment can change the standards of guilt.
"The modern mind is not single-minded: it eliminates from its progressive outlook the Christian implication of creation and consummation, while it assimilates from the ancient worldview the idea of an endless and continuous movement, discarding its circular structure." Karl Lowith
Planck came up with the Planck length as a natural unit of length, not as a minimal length; the use of it as the latter arises out of later theories to relate quantum mechanics and general relativity. (Planck's comment was that it would be meaningful for all times and even for extraterrestrial nonhuman cultures.)
'Tikkun olam' is usually translated as 'repairing the world' or something similar, but it seems more likely to me, based on its actual Talmudic use, that it is should be understood as something more like 'correcting (the defects of) the age'. That is, when the situation at arises leads to people simply ignoring the law due to misaligned incentives, or else evading it, or introduces elements making it practically impossible, the rabbis may by normal halakhic processes come up with a workaround. This seems to fit most reasonably with (e.g.) Hillel's prosbol enactment. When tikkun olam is given as a reason, the rabbis are always providing some workaround to bring people back to the law in a situation that is making it unnecessarily difficult.
What human beings most admire are virtue and skill.
testimony to how others imagine things would be
Discussions of immorality in literature regularly fail to distinguish object and act in a plausible way.
'Grounding' and 'grounded' are just 'prior' and 'posterior'.
the 'memory' or 'storage' of a proof
-- in linear logic, items are removed from memory, unless they are fixed in it by exponentiation; in classical proofs, the memory is taken to include all necessary truths, always, any non-necessary assumptions once assumed, and all conclusions once proved. (Contradiction explosion requires this perfect infinite memory.)
Oral traditions are simultaneously conservative and adaptive.
Some aspects of the behavior of proper names in modern languages are artifacts of legal systems, not intrinsic to proper naming.
"a common nature is the pledge of our union with the Son of God" Calvin
Stupidity is sometimes, even often, the right explanation, but it is rarely the simplest explanation.
If the mind were a pattern, it could be constituted entirely by absences (like a sort of negative space).
Intellectual humility is distinct from openmindedness; the latter under certain conditions is a sign of the former, but not under other conditions.
haunted as aesthetic property
-- it is true that people recognize 'haunted house' in aesthetic terms; it's how people who don't believe in ghosts take it, and people who do believe in ghosts are not missing this sense
Nature as indefinite might
the spooky as that, the mere ability to think which, shows a mental capacity to think of death as a dividing boundary
shiver : spooky :: laughter : comic
the languid sublime
the exemplary irregular as a mark of genius
Exemplary irregularity also seems to be a mark of prophecy (but it arises from an external rather than an internal source).
parent-child & overlapping autonomy
Scripture is in favor of the doctrine that receiving the gospel from the Apostles and those whom they set as overseers is sufficient for salvation, and that this unwritten gospel can contain all that is necessary for salvation.
We have certain knowledge that unwritten traditions integral to the life of the Church, like the canon of Scripture, come from God.
Original justice as not 'as a wreath upon a maiden's hair' but as an integral health and robustness of youth.
the Church as "a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ"
Article XXI of the Thirty-Nine Articles is patently absurd. Councils can and may obviously be gathered together simply by gathering together, and this has been so since the Apostolic Council in Jerusalem, which serves as model and exemplar of all others. Nor have princes been give authority by Scripture to call Councils, much less in such a way as to be essential to the process, a particular absurdity when one considers the early history of the Church. Further, the role of princes, even of such as Constantine, has always primarily been infrastructural more than anything else. And we were just told the Article before that the Church has authority to decree rites and ceremonies and to determine in controversies of faith, which is what general councils do.
Williams's argument on the undesirability of immortality makes the false assumption that only categorical desires prevent life from being dull. But for people not suffering health problems or hormonal balances, lots of things other than desires contribute to making life interesting.
Contrary to Smuts, most of what we do is not done under the urgency of our mortality. (Philosophers and saints have in fact often needed to exhort people with memento-moris when it mattered.)
Logic circuits don't mimic brain actions but brain outputs.
experimentalesque observations
-- the natural historian and field scientist need to develop a sense or taste for the experimentalesque
-- just as picturesque require frameability and composition, the experimentalesque requires relative spearability and trackability/perceptibility of elements
Every concept has a final cause.
philosophical dialogues as conceptual art.
virtues → (by way of roles) offices → noblities, policies, and duties
Each clause of the Paternoster is a ground of trust: fatherhood, eminence, sanctity, sure promise, authority, benefaction, mercy, protection, deliverance.
the role of indefinite problems in factional politics
"He who would tell a tale must look toward three ideals: to tell it well, to tell it beautifully, and to tell the truth. The first is the Gift of God, the second is the Vision of Genius, but the third is the Reward of Honesty." Du Bois
time loop // space loop (rectilinear circle) // inference-step loop (circular argument)
Good politics is more like horticulture than engineering.
the mind's faith in, and hope on behalf of, and love for, the body
the presence of the artist in the art, of the crafter in the crafted
-- art as an instrument of presence; this suggests a distinction between conjoined (music, dance) and separable (painting, sculpture) instrument -- poetry is peculiar in straddling the line, not through complexity of parts (like drama) but in some way at the same time, or at least indifferently -- but perhaps we could say the same of music and dance if thinking of the distinctions in proper media of record
"To learn by heart is to afford the text or music an indwelling clarity and life-force." G. Steiner
"... no epistemology, no philosophy of art can lay claim to inclusiveness if it has nothing to teach us about the nature and meanings of music."
"The text, the painting, the composition are wagers on lastingness."
Textual criticism is part of editing for better use of the text, and its only right mode of proceeding depends on that use.
An interpretation of a text should be consistent and unified (note that this is distinct from the text being consistent and unified), literarily pious (doing justice to author and audience), encompassing of the facts of the text, and actually derived from the text.
quasi-religion: pietistic sentimentalism (//kitsch), analogies of trouvism (buffet spiritualities), conceptual abstractions, analogies of avant-gardism
God - Christ - Sacraments - Heaven as the structure of the mission of the Church
the network of holy signs by which the Church fishes for men
the four senses and icons
the Church as seed, sign, and instrument of the Kingdom of God (Redemptoris missio)
A good reputation is one means by which we contribute to common good.
probabilities as measures of fit of means to ends
good architecture as a support and a refreshment for the soul
Truth values are a flattening of truth for the purpose of a model.
Deriving from the properly theandric acts of Christ, the sacraments are broadly theandric acts of Christ in His sacramental body.
'Oppression' does not signify a hierarchical relationship of any kind, although some hierarchical relationships are oppressive. Who cannot recognize non-hierarchical oppression cannot understand oppression, because the most basic kinds of oppression are not hierarchical.
In every political structure, dominant groups gain advantage by disempowering other groups, because this is what political structure is.
inherence, dependence, and reciprocity as three manifestations of final causation
holiness as love proceeding
Reasoning is the moving image of understanding.
Our knowledge is but a thimbleful, but not the less real for its minuteness.
Ex 24:1-1,9-11 sacred meal
Ex 24:3-8 blood of the covenant
"The solidarity of any civil society demands the presence of four common elements: one governor, one law, the same insignia, and a common end." Aquinas
As the Seven Days are to creation, so the Life of Christ is to our re-creation, as one is to nature, the other is to grace.
assumption : Box :: supposition : Diamond
salvation-history -- historia dispensationis temporalis divinae Providentiae (Augustine, De ver rel 7:13)
three aspects of Llull's homificans: understanding, memory, will
Humanitarian traditions are like faculties for human common good; this is related to why they must be guarded from perversion.
Christ's death qua satisfactory remedy the foundation of the penitential economy of the Church (martyrdom, indulgences, etc.)
Christ's death qua mystery of salvation the foundation of the sacramental economy of the Church
hospitality the mark/expression of royal munus
Each of the major sacraments is, qua visible sign, the Church itself expressing itself in specific form.
In the Creeds, each major point is tied to something historical: creation, the Virgin, Pontius Pilate, the prophets, the apostles.
