The axioms that are given for epistemic logics are often not things that make sense for knowledge in general, but are things to which inquiry towards knowledge may often converge for a given domain of inquiry.
knowledge as understanding logically mediated by causes
Readiness to express a judgment often overrides rather than expresses our beliefs, opinions, intuitions, and understandings.
While assertions can be challenged by, "How do you know?", the challenge can be answered completely by saying, "I don't, I just think this is true for such-and-such reasons."
The infelicity in "It's raining but I don't know it's raining", when it does exist, is in the ambiguity of 'know'. But it often doesn't exist -- it's perfectly reasonable to say, "It's raining, I don't know it is raining, but I have reason enough to think it is."
To say, "Your lottery ticket did not win," even not knowing the actual result of the lottery, may be entirely reasonable if one knows the nature of the lottery.
Assertions are lie-prone not because they entail believing what is asserted but because we often assert what we believe, in contexts in which people are interested in our beliefs.
We retract false assertions not because they are no longer assertions but because we assert as a means to ends.
It's underappreciated how much evolutionary theory owes to linguistics, which provided the first model of a historical science.
"In accomplishing great things, the more you plan, the more fortunate you are." Jouvenel
All artificial forms presuppose natural forms.
All conventional signs presuppose natural signs.
All social constructs presuppose things discovered in nature.
blameworthiness and praiseworthines in skill
reasoning on unpossessed evidence
(1) reasoning on evidence of what such evidence will likely be
(2) reasoning on the limits of our reasoning given what such evidence could be
(3) reasoning on possessed evidence in light of recognition that there is evidence we do not possess
The virtue of eutrapelia increases social versatility.
eutrapelia: pepaideumena hubris, erudita contumelia
"Since God and nature do nothing in vain, nature would not have given us such an inclination toward humor unless it benefited us in some way." Jean Buridan (QNE 4.19)
The first step in understanding the doctrines of simplicity, immutability, etc., is the doctrine of divine incorporeality, because this is what removes imaginable composition, imaginable change, etc., which which we are most familiar, and disciplines the imagination so that it does not distort our reasoning.
Whether outcome or procedure matters more in any given case depends on things quite distinct from either outcome or procedure.
There is no liberty without power.
Accessibility drives often lead to goods and services becoming scarcer because they are often done without regard for sustaining incentives.
the modality of 'true albeit improbably'
amor fati vs. amor providentiae
still life painting and the contemplative mundane
Successful fiat currencies depend on large economies resistant to conquest and natural disaster.
Much of the history of northern India is tied to the fact that the conditions there are not healthy for large-scale breeding of horses and camels.
For children, it generally seems that the kind of punishment matters less than the ceremony of it.
There is no single kind of modality that is 'metaphysical modality'.
impossible worlds as cataloging different kinds of impossibility
contradiction explosion as the principle that all impossibilities are indistinguishable
approaches of Catholics to Protestant theology
(1) ecumenicist abstraction
(2) controversial method
(3) centonizing method
(4) diversity-descriptive method
Bossuet is an example of (4), Bellarmine of (2); (1) is found in, e.g., joint agreements on justification. (3) is difficulty and usually only found in bits and pieces in apologetical discussions.
-- generalizing Aristotle's Poetics as an account of objective causation
To learn mathematics well, one must do many weird things with it.
"Nothing unaltered passes from one contradictory state to another. Otherwise there would be no reason why one contradictory would be more true now than before or why the other would be false." Scotus
society as the interleaving of loyalties and friendships
"What is not against faith and good morals is to be treated as of equal value and to be observed according to the community in which one lives." Augustine Ep 54 ad inq Jan 2
One can participate in holy communion anywhere along the spectrum from purely in sign (by those who take it unworthily) to purely in spirit (by presence in love and loving faith). The same is true of participation in the Church.
'Personal union with Christ' is not an effect of the Eucharist; the Eucharist is *itself* personal union with Christ, whether by sign or by desire or sacramentally. The same is true of 'personal union with other Christians', which we have in union with Christ.
1 Cor 11:27-32 and the linke between confession and communion
Removal from sin is an effect of the Eucharist; it cleanses both venial sin and stain, and while it does not of itself cleanse mortal sin, worthy partaking removes the receiver from future mortal sin by disposiion and assimilation to Christ, by tempering and restraining passions, and by providing consolation in the struggle against sin.
piacularity with respect to sacred things as one of the governing ideas of liturgy and rite
Identity-based gerrymandering of morals is a common human failure point.
As social animals in need of teaching, human beings attain adequation of mind and thing by practical cooperations.
one church
morally: as a human congregation or assembly seeking god
jurally: as the People of God, bonded by covenant
sacrally: as the Body and Bride of Christ, united to God
The waiting of Purgatory is the most clear expression of the new covenant as a covenant, the bond that is the sure foundation for hope.
Abraham : faith :: Moses : hope :: David : love
We do not merely pursue truth on our own, we pursue it with and for others.
Private reading of Scripture is immensely salutary, but it can also sometimes lead to people forgetting that much of the Bible is not addressed to individuals but to Israel and to churches. Most of the New Testament explictly, and all of it implicitly, is concerned with organizing churches.
Communities are structured by communications.
Anatolia converted to Islam through a lack of bishops and educated priests, thus leaving a void that allowed them to be effectively replaced by the spreading dervish movement.
The Church doesn't emerge out of responses to Christ; the Church is always, from its beginning, something into which one is received.
architectonic claims structuring community (e.g., 'Mohammad is the Prophet of God', 'Jesus is the Way, the Truth, the Life', 'Canada is the good governance nation') -- these claims serve as forms that are filled out by particular practices recognizing them, inspired by them, or proclaiming the; they exert a slow, steady pressure on the shape of a community and on the experience of participating in it
language interpreters as symbols of the Holy Spirit in prayer
figurative uses of proper names
ambiguous proper names
empty proper names
attribute-linked proper names (e.g., agnomen)
When a man crosses a street, the man and the street are not in a 'crossing relation'; crossing is an action of the man, associated with man and street having different relations.
eucatastrophe in intellectual inquiry
Academia teaches on quickly that fools and villains may have good insights.
space as the potential for light
'From each according to his ability' is actually a very heavy demand.
Everybody cold reads other people; it is part of how we converse, although most of us do it in a rather sloppy and unpracticed way, since we only use it on the way to other things, not as a technique in itself. There is a reason why so many con artists come to the technique, even independently -- it is a refinement of a general tool of conversation. When 'psychics' use it, for instance, they are just drawing people into conversations, but with a particular aim in view, to which they direct the conversation by means of the technique.
Freedom of speech is a freedom for mutual, and not merely one-way, interaction.
Passions may be condemned not only for being based on false assumptions or choosing means insufficient for the end, but also for being inappropriate to the circumstances, as when they are not regulated by reason.
Christ as moral, jural, and sacral head
"Human beings can't exhaust *anything* by one mode of considering it. The world simply does not appear to us as limited to one single mode of consideration." James Chastek
One human being strengthens another human being's intellect by giving it things usable as middle terms, either by speech or by some other sensible sign.
phenomena described by possible worlds -> causes differentiating possible worlds
Every means of measurement has modalities relevant to it.
counters, clocks, containers
godlike, virtuous decent (continent), indecent, vicious, bestial
Human life is lived between godlikeness and beastliness.
modalities conceptually prior to change and composition vs modalities conceptually superior to change and composition
the practical syllogism as structuring the action itself
Politics involves a remarkable number of people pushing their guesses as if they were self-evident truths.
Intellectual matters can only indirectly be measured by clocks.
the similarities between tense logic P and F and mereological P
a is part of b, a is past of b
place reduction in modal logic Pab -> Pa
standard mereology has both D (Pab -> Oab) and poss. also 4
Every human individual has an intrinsic referentiality to others; to be human is to be with other humans in a broad sense.
figure sculpture / figure painting & the idea of permanent personality
The possible worlds framework requires (1) alternatives (2) discretely and (3) exhaustively (4) describable by lists of truth-valued propositions (5) that are consistent.
friendship as a standing capacity for good communications
The primary point of 'Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, unto God the things that are God's' is not, and can never be, Caesar.
The coin is stamped with the image of Caesar; we are stamped with the image of God.
An obsession with unconditional love is pathological. Unconditional love is by its nature rare, and even more rare is the circumstance in which it can be demanded from anyone else. Almost all human loves are conditional, and should be.
Responsibilities should not be confused with ideals.
presential self-reference ('de se') as neither de re nor de dicto
