Human wisdom lies less in avoiding folly than in panning for gold through its silt.
What Hume calls 'will' is an experience of deliberately being a cause; what he calls "a false sensation or experience of the liberty of indifference" is a real experience of multiple possibilities being involved in our decision.
All reasoning has cause, object, and end.
Monachism is a symbol of the soul itself.
All art constantly aspires to the condition of every other art.
Custom produces (1) facility and (2) tendency.
the vivacity vs the intimacy of ideas and impressions.
relevance objection to argument: linkage response
structural objection to argument: either counterobjection or repair response
material objection to argument: either evidential response or definitional response
Reason by nature is open to what is outside itself.
Boundaries are based on teleologies; change the teleology, change the boundary.
One of the incidental excellences of the Aristotelian account of prudence is that it provides a good way to distinguish the kind of stupidity that is culpable and the kind that excuses.
Ambrose's De Officio as a discussion of professional ethics
T 3.1.1.1 & T 1.4.1 -- the issue of preserving the evidence of long chains of reasoning
morality as object, as end, as cause, as occasion
All our passions, volitions, and actions have reference to other passions, volitions, and actions, although the varieties of reference are considerable.
Actions are only laudable or blameable because they are reasonable or unreasonable, even though laudableness is not synonymous with reasonableness.
Most forms of immorality are mischosen ends.
Not all errors concerning means are equally erroneous.
Note that Hume's argument at SBN 460 assumes there is no real right and wrong independent of judgments about them, which most of his targets would not accept. Hume's argument against Wollaston (SBN 461n) really assumes no final causes in inanimate objects, and relatedly assumes that there is no badness-as, and that immorality is not badness-as-rational-choice. Again with the oak tree example, Hume assumes there is no general badness-for that has a species we call 'immorality'. Note re his first condition at 465 that on most systems of morality we may indeed be 'guilty of crimes in ourselves and independent of our situation'. Note also that his second condition is really about the relation of reason and will, not about the eternal relations, and that it depends on a Humean account of cause. Note that the Cartesians had already proposed a solution to Hume's challenge about oughts and relations: relations of perfection and imperfection.
natural as opposed to: miraculous; rare and unusual; artificial; violent; atelic (chance); civil; moral
Actions are praised or blamed qua signs.
Charity inflames every other principle of affection, raising a stronger love from beauty, wit, kindness, than what would otherwise flow from them.
Human history shows that human beings often act benevolently toward their enemies, even hated enemies, even though that is not the predominant element of their actions toward them. It is hard to be wholly ruthless, even with a foe.
"if the passions depart very much from the common measures on either side, they are always disapprov'd as vicious" SBN 483
Hume and the doctrine of compensation T 3.2.2.2
Discussions of lying often confuse 'excusable' and 'needing no excuse'.
In the long run, every political idea is pressed to the point of becoming stupid.
Everything immaterial is a sign of the infinite.
Half of genius is trying many things.
Assertion is not always a sign of belief.
leisure, recreation, learning-time, unavoidable delay, unforeseeable time; contrast these all with wasting time
-- each of the former could be mistaken for the latter, but it's important not to treat them as if they were the same
three ways in which land may be a people's
(1) sovereignty
(2) ownership
(3) sacred connection
By conjunction of forces, the Church can pray without ceasing and proclaim the gospel to the entire world; by partition of employments, the Church can do these things in a way closer to optimum; and by mutual succor the Church can do these things constantly and regardless of outside interference.
Our self-love is very often not in any direct opposition to our love of others.
"nature provides a remedy in the judgment and understanding, for what is irregular and incommodious in the affections." SBN 489
property as outgrowth of our tool-using ability
-- note that this explains accession very neatly
secondary tool reserve qua reserve of one with whom one is closely associated
reserve for active use as itself a use of tools -- storage, having at hand, etc.
delivery of tool into usability
children calling dibs on use
It's interesting that Hume in his discussion of property never really considers animal territoriality.
relation to work animals : relation to pets :: friendship of use : friendship of pleasure
Music, like hope, reaches forward.
PSR as distinguishing lack of apparent reason from lack of real reason
being, being with, being so
the primacy of love in the order of action
All kinds of knowledge have three modes: starting with appearance, reaching to reality, and ending with God.
The Church is both catholic and apostolic, and thus in the world and not of it.
The catechumen is in the Church as the infant in the womb is in the family.
Repentance fundamentally builds on our mortality.
accounts of contracting
(1) convention
(2) natural act of mind
-- -- -- resolution
-- -- -- desire
-- -- -- volition
-- -- -- -- -- of performance
-- -- -- -- -- of obligation
All property right and obligation admits of degrees; objects may be had in different degrees of possession, and actions may be completely or incompletely required.
In a free society, citizens will have protection from penalties, in various degrees, due to longstanding custom, inherited right, presumption of freedom, and novelty of situation, as well as due to positive law.
Crackpots and conspiracy theorists are often a sign of a society that treats ideas as important, because they exhibit a pathology of that.
reading of Scripture, study of Scripture, practice of Scripture
reception, interpretation, appropriation
Being: efficient, formal, final
Theoretical Intellect: memory, word, love
Productive Intellect: idea, energy, power
Will: intention, choice, enjoyment
"Divine being is necessary with the most perfect necessity of immateriality." Bonaventure
wisdom received, wisdom attained, wisdom itself
Contingency is of different kinds.
Propositions are only necessary to the extent that they attribute necessities to things.
familiarities -> plausibilities
memento mori as vaccination against grief
In T 3.3.1 (SBN 577), Hume explains the theme of T 3.2: "human contrivances for the interest of society" arising from the process of sympathy.
A possibility: Some contingent truths are not contingent relative to some other contingent truths.
Propositions as such are explained by proposition-making; what propositions describe is not generally explained by propositions.
Necessarily, there exists a cause capable of having contingent effects.
All reflections trace back to something reflected.
eikasia-contingency vs pistis-contingency
natural appetite for wisdom -> God
natural appetite for happiness -> God
natural appetite for peace -> God
natural appetite for truth -> God
testimony for experience of God
testimony for plausibility of arguments for existence of God
When we regard our perceptions, we find them related to each other by being parts of a whole.
delicacy of sentiment, just sense of morals, greatness of soul, and depth of reasoning and reflection as the properties of great philosophical inquiry
Since Hume takes perception to be whatever is present to mind, he seems committed to saying impressions are more present, or at least more strongly present, to mind than ideas. In most accounts, this would paradoxical.
Most of the causation we experience clearly involves intermediation.
constant conjunction as a sign of causation
To say that causation just is constant conjunction is as if one took down a volume of Shakespeare and said that it was just patterns of marks on paper; it ignores the broader system within which the patterns are patterns.
We only understand constant conjunction as causal by understanding it as caused.
Even simple forms of causation are often associated with many different invariable sequences.
(1) Everything that exists is such that it is possible to exist.
(2) Being such that it is possible to exist involves particular conditions, intrinsic or extrinsic.
(3) Particular conditions involved in the possibility of something existing we can call reasons.
(4) Everything that exists is such that there are reasons adequate for its existing.
Every boundary has a cause.
equitable vs rigoristic reading
One of the problems with 'wokism' is its regular conflation of aesthetic badness and etiquette badness with injustice.
"Fides Trinitatis est fundamentum et radix est divine cultus et totius christianus religionis." Bonaventure
vestige : image : Old Testament : New Testament
the three books in which the doctrine of the Trinity is read (Bonaventure)
(1) book of creation
-- -- --(a) by vestige
-- -- -- (b) by image
(2) book of Scripture
-- -- -- (a) Old Testament
-- -- -- (b) New Testament
(3) book of life
-- -- -- (a) lumen inditum
-- -- -- (b) lumen infusum
pelagus substantiae infinitum
begins to exist -> dependent -> caused by another
God is an infinity of infinities; He is infinite with the infinity of power, He is infinite with the infinity of wisdom, He is infinite with the infinity of love; He is infinite with the infinity of life and truth and nobility.
