Sonnet Variations III

 Shakespearean Variations: Sonnet 3

Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest;
you always seem to change it for another;
when bored of new an older face renewest
or to newer face become a careless mother.
Your mind is like some strange dishonest womb;
you perpetuate a lying husbandry;
your soul is ever-whitened stone of tomb;
deception's line your cold posterity.
I wish I could repose my faith on thee,
but you devoured my trust, my hope, my prime,
and endless years I nevermore shall see;
your lies devoured more than Father Time.
-- But speak a pretty word, and I shall be
a fool who swiftly slides to trust in thee.

Dashed Off XVII

 "For intelligent, moral natures 'glory' means the manifestation of power, wisdom, and goodness in the unity of divine operation." Rosmini
"Glory is simply the applause that intelligence gives to an intelligence."
"The divine glory that penetrates and shines throughout the universe is of two kinds: substantial, which is the glory God gives to himself, and accidental, which intelligent beings created by God give to their creator."
"Every new moral good gained increases the capital with which we are trading. Consequently, the trading is always renewed in proportion to the increased capital, and returns what business people call *compound interest*."

to think about: assigning probabilities requires determining the relevant ensemble, which requires determining the final cause

"He descended in the soul, rose in the flesh, and ascended in both." IV Lateran

"The body is our general medium for having a world." Merleau-Ponty

investigative, critical, judicial, coactive, and hortative modes of conscience

Conscience is experienced as a participation in a higher order.

Our moral approval and disapproval always has a direction toward something much greater than ourselves.

Worship allows one to be part of the glory of God.

multiplayer game worlds as structured in interrelations constituting social entities

the relational as capable of simulating the substantial

the sorrow that blossoms into truth
the silence that leaves room for insight

As time goes on, things will mostly end up in the states that are most available. This is obvious, but also a fundamental principle of planning people often forget.

why there is evil vs. why it is not intolerable that there is evil

musical reasoning as analogical reasoning

Empathy is less a feeling than a mode of feeling.

Laws and legal systems always have to deal with the distinction between 'on file' and 'not on file' statuses.

Searle's constitutive rules are principles of artificial classification for practical rather than theoretical purposes and for social use rather than individual use.

Institutional facts get their deontic and normative character from being means to shared value as an end.

When we constitute instititional facts, we build dispositions within dispositions.

In 'X counts as Y in context C', 'counts as' is capable of meaning some very different things.

Understanding can only combine with erudition by in some sense setting the erudition aside.

The first beginning of the institution of each major sacrament is creation.

At least some ancient synagogues seem to have had a literal seat that was "the seat of Moses"; this appears to be mentioned in passing in Pes. D'Rav Kahana 1:7, where Rev Aaha compares the throne of Solomon to "the chair of Moses". There are stone chairs in synagogues that archeologists have speculatively classified as these chairs.

Consecration of churches derives from the Eucharist; the earliest forms are mostly just particular celebrations of the Eucharist; transfer of relics, lustrations, and unctions were added as time went on; all three subserve the Eucharist. (See Bouyer, Rite and Man.)

'X counts as Y'
as instance, as proxy, as mark, as parallel/analogue

"There never was a state but was committed to acts and maxims which it is its crime to maintain, and its ruin to abandon." Newman

the state as self-instrumentality of the civil society

Reform without the necessary preparation is often the beginning of corruption.

Scripture as operating in the Church like a conscience

Pace Searle, it makes complete sense to say that the function of colds is to spread cold germs; this is a function imposed on  us by cold germs.

the epistemological priority of institutional facts over physical facts

adversarial vs cooperative imposition of functions

The structure of institutional facts is a structure of authority in both disposition and act.

Deontic powers are not used merely to regulate relations between people; we also use them to regulate ourselves.

judicial notice & 'X counts as X in context of the court'

the office as an externalization of a household function

Every intention is a potential we-intention.

Law of Nature : Diamond :: End in Itself : Null :: Kingdom of Ends : Box

good taste as the balance between nature and freedom

charm (attractiveness), fit (fitness), and duty (rightness) in action
charm : Diamond :: fit : Null :: duty : Box

the properly dubitable
(1) lack of evidentness in itself
(2) lack of evidentness in means of proof
(3) lack of evidentness in intellectual grasp

Abstraction is how one arrives at something into which to inquire in order to know.

The doctrine of the Trinity is what you get when you treat salvation history not merely as a record of things done but as God revealing His very self.

composition, mutability, and spatiotemporal limitations (measurability) as three things that restrict presence

introspection as always a kind of knowledge-that

consent to inevitability as overlap of nature and will

mimesis of divine nature in virtue (morally) and mimesis of divine nature in rites (symbolically)

the importance of maintaining a balance in objective causation -- it is easy for a push one way to overextend by a sort of momentum or 'galley effect'
==> this is why much effective communication and explanation involves 'this but not that' structure

direct objective causation vs indirect objective causation by analogy

the supernatural vs the exalted natural

ceremonial rites as artificial methods for creating habitudes
--> note that there are natural rites

Leadership works by sign that specifies, by speech that makes common, by sympathetic connection that reinforces.

Drugs do not usually have very specific and consistent effects, so in cases in which we need them to do very specific things as consistently as possible, as in medicine, we have to take into account that they will often fail in either specificity or consistency or both.

Children are what make one ready to be a parent.

Genuine humility comes out of a royal, priestly, or prophetic position.

Some actions are just the kinds of actions that are joint actions; we cannot intend to do them any way but jointly.

Norse myth does not have a strong tendency to personification of nature; gods and giants have natural associations, but even very distinctive gods, like Odin and Thor, don't personify natural phenomena, but merely have authority and power with natural associations in story.

plural subjects as built up by quasi-readiness (cp. Gilbert)
--> the willingness to be ready to act together

care for the soul
(1) within the cosmos
(2) within the polis
(3) within the psyche

Christ "does the things of a slave in a lordly manner, that is, He does the things of the flesh as God" (Maximus, Amb. 4).

Hero-cults seem to generate enthusiasm (and thus easily diffuse) while ancestor-cults seem to generate stability (but are thus slow to diffuse). Hero-cults can spread quickly and spontaneously, but spread of ancestor-cults is quickest when induced by educational systems.

For something actually to be 'health care' or 'medical care', it has to be appropriate technically, legally, and morally.

Great friendships are often built out of small favors.

Every scientific theory is concerned with possibilia, and developing a theory from experiment presupposes True Implies Diamond.

Scientific inquiry is by its nature a discipline of patience.

Weak force interactions require extremely unusual mass (0.001 GeV) -- thus 'weak' is not strength of force in a given interaction but its rareness and thus lack of cumulative effect. --> Only the weak force changes particle identities in its decay.

Gresham's Law arises when there is a practical split between the monetary function, medium exchange, and the  monetary function, store of value. (Guala)

The modern diplomatic system largely works by states allowing other states to establish 'licensed' (credentialed) intelligence and espionage systems in their jurisdiction, in exchange for the other state doing the same and for diplomatic concession and consideration.

Nobody has a clear idea how their ideal society would work. Therefore we have politics.

Every ongoing society has its own form of traditionalism.

space as compossibility with respect to boundaries

Legal permissions are not absences; they are formed.

Socrates : logos :: Glaucon : virtuous thymos :: Adeimantus : virtuous desire
-- Glaucon as "most brave in all things"
-- note that Adeimantus is particularly worried about the happiness of guardians.

Sonnet Variations II

 Shakespearean Variations: Sonnet 2

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow
perhaps a little snow shall grace your field
and furrows run more deep than they do now,
but youth as well as age will then be held;
for then where balance of all seasons lies,
where half-ish spent and hoped are all your days,
the fullness of your life before my eyes
will be laid bare and have my thanks and praise.
Our youth is but an instrument of use
in study of the ways of thine and mine;
our age is but occasion and excuse
to dream again the dreams of mine and thine.
-- And forty is still young, and not too old;
not soul, nor flesh, by then has yet grown cold.

Sonnet Variations I

 Ralph McInerny has a book of sonnets, Shakespearean Variations, in which he has taken the first line and the words of the end-rhymes of one of William Shakespeare's sonnets and built from it a new sonnet. For August, I decided that I would do a looser version of this -- sometimes from Shakespeare, sometimes from someone else, and perhaps I might also vary which line is kept rather than always doing only the first one. In any case, it should be good poetic practice.

Shakespearean Variation: Sonnet 1

From fairest creatures we desire increase;
alas, they are too apt to fade and die,
to leave a lesser world from their decrease,
save but the shadow frail of memory.
So little fair outlasts our glancing eyes!
To time's devouring fire they are but fuel,
and promise that they give seems nought but lies,
save that a liar's tongue is not so cruel.
But beauty is still more than ornament;
your eyes, though briefest flowers in the spring,
bestow on me some strange, undreamed content
that seems beyond remembrance niggarding.
-- Why speak of time? Your eyes seem but to be;
a fool alone would put a clock to thee.

Theoretic Vision

 Philosophy is a more intense sort of experience than common life is, just as pure and subtle music, heard in retirement, is something keener and more intense than the howling of storms or the rumble of cities. For this reason philosophy, when a poet is not mindless, enters inevitably into his poetry, since it has entered into his life; or rather, the detail of things and the detail of ideas pass equally into his verse, when both alike lie in the path that has led him to his ideal. To object to theory in poetry would be like objecting to words there; for words, too, are symbols without the sensuous character of the things they stand for; and yet it is only by the net of new connections which words throw over things, in recalling them, that poetry arises at all. Poetry is an attenuation, a rehandling, an echo of crude experience; it is itself a theoretic vision of things at arm's length. 

[George Santayana, Three Philosophical Poets, p. 124.]

One Nameless, Tattered, Broken Man

 The Deluge
by G. K. Chesterton 

Though giant rains put out the sun,
Here stand I for a sign.
Though earth be filled with waters dark,
My cup is filled with wine.
Tell to the trembling priests that here
Under the deluge rod,
One nameless, tattered, broken man
Stood up, and drank to God. 

 Sun has been where the rain is now,
Bees in the heat to hum,
Haply a humming maiden came,
Now let the Deluge come:
Brown of aureole, green of garb,
Straight as a golden rod,
Drink to the throne of thunder now!
Drink to the wrath of God. 

 High in the wreck I held the cup,
I clutched my rusty sword,
I cocked my tattered feather
To the glory of the Lord.
Not undone were the heaven and earth,
This hollow world thrown up,
Before one man had stood up straight,
And drained it like a cup.

Like Inventions for the Same Reason

David Hume (Treatise 3.2.4):

 In order to aid the imagination in conceiving the transference of property, we take the sensible object, and actually transfer its possession to the person, on whom we would bestow the property. The supposed resemblance of the actions, and the presence of this sensible delivery, deceive the mind, and make it fancy, that it conceives the mysterious transition of the property. And that this explication of the matter is just, appears hence, that men have invented a symbolical delivery, to satisfy the fancy, where the real one is impracticable. Thus the giving the keys of a granary is understood to be the delivery of the corn contained in it: The giving of stone and earth represents the delivery of a manor. This is a kind of superstitious practice in civil laws, and in the laws of nature, resembling the Roman catholic superstitions in religion. As the Roman catholics represent the inconceivable mysteries of the Christian religion, and render them more present to the mind, by a taper, or habit, or grimace, which is supposed to resemble them; so lawyers and moralists have run into like inventions for the same reason, and have endeavoured by those means to satisfy themselves concerning the transference of property by consent.

'Taper', of course, is a candle or lamp, and 'habit' is a vestment or article of clothing; but it's very easy to misread 'grimace', whose meaning has changed over time. A grimace (in the eighteenth century, the accent would have been on the second syllable, and the 'a' could, depending on dialect, have been a long 'a') originally meant an affectation or a pretense; 'fashionable grimace', for instance, would be the stylized etiquette of the fashionable classes. It could also mean, relatedly, a mask, and thus it comes down to us meaning a contorted facial expression, which is not at all what Hume means. 'Laws of nature' here also means something like the general rules of justice (which are artificial, but are natural in the sense of being inevitably constructed over time when people interact), not scientific laws. With 'mysterious', the immediate reference is to the 'inconceivable mysteries; I'm not sure if Hume is also deliberately playing on the fact that the word could also mean 'sacramental', but he might well be doing so.

Hume is being deliberately sarcastic throughout. 'Inconceivable mysteries of the Christian religion' is not a compliment but an ironic disparagement, and very carefully selected, I think, since it is something that could be said non-disparagingly. Hume is also -- as is often the case when he talks about Catholics -- saying something negative about them that might be agreed with by the dimmer sort among Hume's Scottish Presbyterian or Anglican peers, but in a way that would just as equally apply to Scottish Presbyterians and Anglicans. That Catholics engage in mummery would have had the agreement of a lot of Protestants, but Hume has stated it so broadly that it doesn't hit only Catholics. Protestants, after all, have the same 'inconceivable mysteries', and have many of the same signs of them, however simplified; changing from a doctrine of transubstantiation to a doctrine of spiritual presence or memorial doesn't make the communion service any less symbolic. As I mentioned, this all fits with Hume's common practice on this point; for instance, he generalized Protestant criticisms against Catholic miracles so that they would be a problem for the miracles Protestants accept, as well.

The notion of legal superstition is interesting, and accusing civil lawyers of being like Catholics is actually rather funny in its way, but also complicates the entire discussion. Hume assumes that 'symbolical delivery' must be false (he used the term a little before this passage) because it is symbolical. But in the relevant legal system, transferring the keys to the granary does not merely represent the transition of property; it is part of the transition of property. The symbolic act is an instrumental component of actually doing what it symbolizes. It's easy to miss that every contract is a sort of symbolical delivery. If you sign over your property to me, the signed contract is not any less symbolic than the keys handed over. But if you sign over your property to me, you did in fact transfer your property to me, and signing the written paper was part of actually doing so, not a mere representation of it. Hume seems to have the notion that the transfer of property is independent of the symbolic acts, with the symbolic act merely resembling the transfer; but the symbolic act instrumentally effects the transfer, as well. 

In any case, while Hume takes all this to have a negative valence, I think Hume has actually stumbled on a profoundly important set of points, whose full significance he misses by jumping immediately to ironic remarks about superstition. The civil legal system is indeed somewhat to man as the sacramental system is to God; the former reflects the mysteries of man in somewhat like the way the latter reflects the mysteries of God; through the former, man is a small creator and little savior, after his own small fashion dispensing gifts to transform human life; the law is thus far an analogue of grace. More immediately, this sort of symbolic invention is a universal part of life, found in quite robust forms in religion and in law, but generalizing out from there to all sorts of things, like ordinary communication and etiquette, that work in something like the same way. If we wish to call it 'superstition', as Hume does in his joke on civil lawyers, we are committed to much of human life being not merely superstitious but unavoidably so.

Fortnightly Book, July 28

 When I was considering what to do for the next fortnightly book, Michael Flynn's posthumously published novel, In the Belly of the Whale, arrived in the mail. When he died last year, I did my favorite of his novels, In the Country of the Blind; it seems good to do his last novel. It should be quite nice. The work occurs in the same fictional universe as The January Dancer, Up Jim River, In the Lion's Mouth, and On the Razor's Edge, but in terms of the chronology of that fictional universe occurs long before any of those works, so it should be quite standalone. And, given the author, it should be intelligent entertainment, which I rather need given that I've been feeling a little burned out; I started to write 'February 28' as the date in the title of this post, and it took me a moment -- only a moment, but too much of a moment -- to register why that looked wrong.

The Whale of the title is a huge (whale of a) generational starship, designed eventually to reach Tau Ceti (in the constellation of the Whale, Cetus) after many generations of flight. The crew responsible for the ship therefore function as an isolated society, one with a constitution designed by Earth's finest social engineers. A problem with the gravitational plates occurred in flight which led to several hundred deaths and a portion of the ship being mostly unusable. At the beginning of the book, an unknown man -- it's a closed system, there should be no unknown men -- is discovered murdered in a dead-end hallway whose surveillance cameras were out, apparently never repaired, and the primary clue is that his pockets are full of seeds. As the detectives unravel this mystery, I think we'll see the exposure of dangerous cracks in the social system of the ship. Michael Flynn was always interested in the logic of failure. It reminds me somewhat of another of his works, The Wreck of the River of Stars; the essential theme of Wreck, which I've considered doing for the fortnightly book, is failure and collapse due to unintentional mismatches of human personality, whereas this seems like it will be about failure and collapse due to unintentional design flaws in social systems.