This begins the notebook that was started in April 2023.
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There are really only two plausible accounts of multiple discovery:
(1) the possible soultions are highly constrained by the problems themselves, so that insightful individuals working the same problems can come up with very similar solutions;
(2) there are really no multiple discoveries; what we call 'multiple discoveries' are really distributed parts ofa diffused single discovery by the whole community.
Even where discoveries are made by reasoning (dialectic), uptake is always developed by means more broadly political (rhetoric) and popularized by means more imaginative and even fictional (poetics).
Promissory obligations are an appartus by which human beings attempt to imitate a divine reliability; indeed, in oaths and vows, traditionally speaking, they are a means to participate in a system grounded in divine reliability.
Explicit promises in general tend to obligate more than implicit promises.
In a promise to oneself, one represents oneself as two moral persons.
As regularity, especially among many things, is an effect, the regularlity theory of laws of nature requires something like a God.
Laws of nature may be
(1) necessary
(2) evolved
(3) freely chosen
--> (2) runs into the problem of Smolin's 'meta-laws dilemma', thus (2) has to reduce to (1), (3), or some combination of both. What is true of (2) covers all cases in which they are taken to arise by chance.
--> Given how laws of nature function in explanation, (1) seems to require that laws of nature have some kind of causal efficacy.
Biological parents have obligations to their children and therefore rights associated with fulfilling those obligations.
human species -> functional roles in surviving and thriving of species -> distinction of male and female -> need to support male & female in their species-function roles -> closest-fit sorting according to male and female
We cannot demonstrate wholly revealed doctrines, but we can sometimes demonstrate the intellectual attractions of such doctrines.
In the confessional we become officers of the court of mercy.
the primary modalities of genuine love
(1) amor gratuitus
(2) amor debitus
(3) amor ex utroque permixtus
-- love originating, love mediating, love returning
The notion that you can have good homily, fulfilling the actual purpose of homilies, in ten minutes, is usually absurd; it requires rhetorical skills most people cannot be expected to have. One sees this problem in Evangelii Gaudium, which requires a standard of preaching for priests that cannot possibly admit of general implementation, in which priests are expected to give text-anchored short sermons that capture the unifying insights of profound texts in a clear and accessible way so as to be relevant to the particular needs of their parishioners, using vivid images with strong emotional effect, at every Mass. Professional orators with teams of support could not achieve this. It may be an ideal at the limit, but it is not an actionable guide; good homilies will have highly variable relations to such an ideal, and trying to stuff every homily this way is a recipe for bad and confusing homilies. Better achieved basic expectations than bungled impossibilities. A good homily, content-wise, should do one or two of the following:
(1) proclaim the central truth of the gospel
(2) explain the sacraments
(3) address a problem or concern in the parish in light of the gospel
(4) explain the Scriptures
It should always be done in a way mindful that it is a discourse specifically preparing for communion, which is what distinguishes homily from other speeches on these subjects. Everything else --length, style, structure, particular aims, rhetorical apparatus of effect -- should simply be appropriate to its being a homily with that content.
Because of the configuration of rods and cones in the eye, we all approximate color blindness in our peripheral vision.
Whether one is speaking of dogs or of people, one trains *not* to do something by training to do something else. This is an important truth for self-improvement.
The common good of a community can be 'read' in an 'instrumentalist' way, an 'aggregative' way, or a 'distinctive' way; it is the same common good, and any limitations are in relying on only one reading.
"Love is a force of limitless expansiveness, and the church, founded upon love, must permeate the entire life of human society, all its relations and activity, descending into everythign an delevating everything to itself." Soloviev
"All that is good in man an in humanity is protected against distortion and perversion only in unity with Divinity."
"The intrinsic unity of the ecclesiastical hierarchy depends on its divine origin, and ecumenical councils and poples have served as the visible expression of this unity in the life of the church."
"Logic, historical experience, and the word of God teach us that the chief condition of *lasting power is truth*, that is, faithfulness to oneself, the absence of internal contradiction and bifurcation."
"The church, as an ecumenical or universal entity, that is, as the unity of everything with God, can only actually be realized through universal history -- in the entire aggregate of nations and times."
Beings of reason are the intellect drawing out what is virtually or eminently in causes (sometimes itself) so that they are actual objects.
translated being -- being understood on the model of other being, due to some structural or functional similairity (object seen through guise)
-- could perhaps also be called figurate being
A mode is said with regard to measure, either formally or effectively. Wherever something is received, it is received in some mode.
the magnanimity that 'dares to forgive' (Gibbon)
Parenthood is one of the fundamental modes of participating in any civil society.
Divine creation as the first substrate of all human communication, the primal making-common
"A verbum is nothing other than an expressed and expressive likeness conceived by the power of an intelligent spirit by which it knows itself or another." Bonaventure
Rabbi Hama b. R. Hanina (Sotah 14a) -- God is a consuming fire (Dt 4:24) therefore to walk with Shekhinah (Dt 13:5) requires walking after the middot, not His direct presence: clothe the naked (Gn 3:21), visit the sick (Gn 18:1), console mourners (Gn 25:11), bury the dead (Dt 34:6).
The end of the state is the common good of the civil society, but the state is not the exclusive means to that good, and it fails as means if it chokes out other means to the common good of civil society.
the work of art as practical instrumental conventional sign
"One cannot teach a truth clearly if one is actually thinking about the teaching and not about the truth." Chesterton
"It is impossible to ahve spiritual equality, just as it is impossible to have legal equality without a legal authority. For equality is not a chaos, it is a rank."
Peirce's Firstness is an availability, Secondness a response, Thirdness a coordination. (Cf. Peirce's own discriptions -- spontaneity, dependence, mediation.)
A symbol has relations to its components (universal grammar), to its objects (universal logic), and to other symbols in the same system of symbols (universal rhetoric).
practical signs that are episodic (stop sign) vs. those that are narrative (recipe)
Computer programs are systems of narratives.
Caring for others can mostly be done only sporadically when not supported by a community of carers who can provide assistance, temporarily sub in, divide up labor,, facilitate fulfilling preconditions for care, etc.
Our inner circles of caring cannot be arbitrarily formed; they are often simply received, and even when formed are formed cooperatively.
Caring requires recognizing connections that already exist.
All covenants presuppose an aspect of the order of creation.
natural impression arguments for God's existence (cf. Bonaventure: desire for wisdom, desire for happiness, desire for peace, love of truth)
"...it is possible that something repugnant to fallen reason is consonant with innocent or elevated reason." Bonaventure
Church architecture should teach the imagination.
The ancient Church, as shown by its behavior, treated statements of neither council nor pope as definitive, but it did treat both as major anchoring points in a broader clarification, and as theose statements radicated, they became central pillars with respect to which others had to be assessed.
"A topos is a premise arising from a precept." Alexander of Aphrodisias
It is always a mistake to begin one's account of causation with assumptions about causation in general rather than with why an account of causation is needed.
(1) Natural selection guarantees the existence of a general functionality toward enduring.
(2) General functionalities are expressed through particular functions.
(3) Particular functions are specified by role in a system with general functionality.
(4) Particular functions are not wholly explained by general functionalities, and not reducible entirely to them.
(5) The systems within which particular functions may be defined are many; for instance, there are particular functions within organisms and particular functions within populations of organisms.
(6) Life functions through interaction with the environment may guarantee the existence of general functionalities toward contributing to the life of the organism, insofar as the relevant parts of the environment are in relation to the life function.
(7) Reason is a life function that guarantees the existence of the general functionality of contributing to rational roles in human life.
For a nominalist to talk of 'spacetime regions' is already to have stopped being a nominalist.
evidence as a function within general rational functionality
(1) Start with coherences in the world.
(2) These coherences verify some propositions, falsify others, and leave others neither verified or falsified.
(3) In these coherences, there can be relations of supposed coherence to presupposed coherences.
(4) If a is presupposed by b, b is not at-least-part of a.
(5) If a is presupposed by b and c is part of b, a is presupposed by c.
(6) If a is presupposed by b and b is presupposed by c, a is presupposed by c.
(7) If b is wholly contingent, there is an a such that a is presupposed by b.
(8) All parts of a necessary coherence are necessary.
(9) Every contingent coherence has a wholly contingent part.
(10) If there are any contingent coherences, the aggregate of all wholly contingent coherences is wholly contingent.
(11) If there are any contingent coherences, the aggregate of all wholly contingent coherences presupposes some necessary coherence.
(12) Any non-empty set of coherences can be aggregated into one coherence.
(13) A historical persistence is a series of coherence of a give type related by presupposition.
